4 
















LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 
S]ielf......Ogtl. 



UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



■ 





m 





















THE 



World's Famous Women: 



SERIES OF SKETCHES 



OF 



Women who have n Won Distinction by their Genius and 

Achievements as Authors, Artists, Actors, Kulers, 

or within the Precincts of Home. 



BY JAMES PARTON, 

AUTHOR OP 

"LIFE AND TIMES OF BENJAMIN FRANKLIN," "LIFE OF THOMAS JEFFER- 
SON," " LIFE OF VOLTAIRE/' " GENERAL BUTLER IN NEW ORLEANS," 
"LIFE OF AARON BURR," "PEOPLE'S BOOK OF BIOGRA- 
PHY," "LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON," ETC. 

' OF( 



ILLUSTRATED. 




EDGEWOOD PUBLISHING COMPANY. 



II THE LIB*.,*-, 
fl OF CONGRESS 

I t WASHING 









Copyright, 1890, by Hubbard Brothers. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



i. 

CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN. 

Born a tomboy — Her early life in Boston — A great mimic — Her 
first play — Coriolanus and Macready — Birth of her talent — 
Her father's bankruptcy — She sings in opera — Failure of her 
voice — Plays Lady Macbeth — Her arduous toils — Member of 
the Park Company — Her acting of Goneril — She appears in 
London — A mutton chop a day — Dazzling success — Return 
home — During the war — Her patriotism and generosity — Her 
death 17 

II. 

MARIA MITCHELL. 

The Mitchells in Nantucket — Maria's education — In the Nan- 
tucket library — Her first telescope — She discovers a comet — 
Tour of Europe — Professor at Vassar — Her dome parties — Her 
liberal opinions. . 28 

III. 

MRS. TROLLOPE. 

Cincinnati in 1827 — The Trollope family there — Her impres- 
sions of slavery — An evening party in Cincinnati — Her dis- 
like of America — The fourth of July — Her impressions of 
3STew York — Her remarks upon Church going — Anthony 
Trollope-~His method of working — Mrs. Trollope's last years. 38 



12 CONTENTS. 

IV. / 

ADELAIDE PHILLIPS. 

Bom at Stratford-on-Avon — Removal to Boston — Her first 
appearance on the stage — A child actress — Anecdote of 
Warren — She sings before Jenny Lind — Studies in Italy — 
Her debut — Her career in opera — Her death and burial. . 5? 

V. 

TWO QUEENS. THE DAUGHTERS OP JAMES n OF 
ENGLAND. 

The Countess of Bentinct's letter-chest— Why James the Second 
turned Catholic — The Princess Mary argues with him — Wil- 
liam of Orange sails for England — His parting with Mary — 
Her life during his absence — Crowned Queen of England- 
Queen Anne's sorrowful life — Death of Queen Mary. . . 60 

VI. 

AN EVENING WITH RACHEL. 
Her training for the stage — Alfred de Musset — He reports the 
supper — The brass platters — She describes her housekeeping 
— Tastes of absinthe — She makes punch — Cooks the beef- 
steak — Her love of Racine — Resolves to play Phedre — Her 
brutal father. , . . ... . . . .68 

VII. 

JOSEPHINE AND BONAPARTE. 

Their coronation impending — Opposition of the Bonaparte fam- 
ily — Scene at court — Josephine jealous — Noble conduct of 
her son, Eugene — The coronation rehearsed. . . .78 

VIII. 

LADY MORGAN. 

Her parents and childhood — Her father's romantic marriage- 
Early writings — Her father's bankruptcy — Goes as governess 
— Anecdote — Interview with a publisher — Her first novel — 
The Wild Irish Girl— Her marriage — Residence in Paris — 
Tisit to Lafayette — Her last years. .... 83 



CONTENTS. 13 

IX. 

MARIA THERESA. 

Her father the Emperor — Frederick of Prussia seizes he? Prof 4 
ince — Yields Silesia to the conqueror — Interval of peace — 
The seven years' war — Her complaisance to Pompadour — 
Frederick's invasion of Saxony — She abolishes torture — 
Frederick's tribute to her * 105 

X. 

LADY FRANKLIN. 
Bir John Franklin's first wife — He marries Jane Griffin — Her 
life in Van Diemen's land — His last Arctic expedition — Not 
heard from — She assists in the search — Her address to the 
President of the United States — The liberality of Henry 
Grinnell — Lieutenant de Haven — The " Prince Albert" — Sir 
Edward Belcher's attempt — Discovery of relics by Dr. Rae — 
Lady Franklin's appeal to Lord Palmerston — Captain M'Clin- 
tock's expedition — Her letter to him — The final success. . 112 

XI. 

MADAME DE MIRAMION. 
Her early life — Her extreme piety — Death of her father — Her 
wonderful beauty — Her marriage — Death of her husband — 
— The young widow carried off — Devotes her life to charity* 125 

XII. 

PEG O'NEAL. 

The O'Neal Tavern in Washington — General Jackson and his 
wife inmates — Peg's childhood — She marries Purser Timber- 
lake — Death of her husband — Marries Senator Eaton — The 
great scandal — General Jackson defends her — Martin Van 
Buren calls upon her — Efforts of the British and Russian 
ministers — The Russian ball — The English dinner — General 
Jackson's gratitude to Van Buren — Mrs. Eaton's later years. . 131 

XIII. 

MRS. L. M. MONMOUTH, AND HOW SHE LIVED ON 
FORTY DOLLARS A YEAR. 

From affluence to poverty — Advice of her neighbors — The strug- 
gle for independence — Her clothing — A cheap dressing-gown 
2 



14 



CONTENTS. 



— Her shoes— Her food— Her house a show— Balzac's extrava- 
gance—Sir Walter Scott ruined by his house. . . .138 

XIV. 

TRIAL OF JEANNE DAEC, COMMONLY CALLED JOAN 

OF ABC. 

Rome refuses to canonize the Maid— Manuscript reports of her 
trial-— Her native village— France in 1428— A divided allegi- 
ance— The Maid's real name— Her character in childhood— 
Her youth— Effect of Catholic habits—Her commanding 
presence — Her voices— A revival of religion in the French 
army — Politicians— Her brilliant career — Her capture — 
Attempt to escape — In chains at Rouen Castle — The court 
convened — The prisoner examined — She relates her early life 
Her firmness — The public sermon — She recants — Sentenced 
to perpetual imprisonment — Again in chains — Resumes her 
man's dress — She revokes her recantation — Burned at the 
stake 148 

XV. 

HARRIET MARTINEAU. 

Her philanthropic severity — Anecdote of Sydney Smith — Her 
sorrowful childhood — Her education — Begins to write — Dis- 
covery of her secret— In the United States— Attends a meet- 
ing of abolitionists— Her speech — Odium resulting— Her 
religious opinions— Florence Nightingale upon her death. . 193 

XVI. 

THE WIFE OF LAFAYETTE. 

Mysterious power of rank — Prince of Wales in New York- 
Lafayette among the Six Nations — Revisits them in 1784— 
The treaty of Fort Schuyler — Anecdote of Red Jacket — Ori- 
gin of Lafayette's republicanism — Stationed at Metz— Dines 
with the Duke of Gloucester — The news from America — 
Determines to join the insurgents — Ancestry of Madame de 
Lafayette — Their marriage — He sets sail — Their correspond- 
ence — He describes his wound — He returns to France — Bril- 
liancy of their position at court — The French Revolution— 
Madame escapes the guillotine — Intercedes for her husband 
with the Emperor of Austria — Shares his imprisonment — Her 
premature death — Her descendants. , . . . . 204 



%m 



CONTENTS. 15 

XVII. 

BETSY PATTERSON, OTHERWISE MADAME JEROME 
BONAPARTE OF BALTIMORE. 

Career of her father—The richest man in the United States — 
Jerome Bonaparte in Baltimore — Her father opposes her mar- 
riage — Consents at last— Napoleon refuses to recognize her — \/ 
Her return to Baltimore — She despises her country — Letter 
to Lady Morgan — Betsy reproved by her father — His will — 
Close of her life. 219 

XVIII. 

SOME LADIES OF THE OLD SCHOOL. 

Their rage for gambling — Anecdote of the two black aces — The 

woman's club of London — Their sense of decency — Our sum- \ 

mer hotels — Modern chivalry— Anecdote of Lekain — Society 
in the colonies — A Connecticut village — The tyranny of 
fashion — Fashion in ancient times — Lord Palmerston's big 
boots . . . . 228 

XIX. 

TORU DUTT. 

Her genius discovered by Mr. Gosse — Her translations from the 
French — Toru and Aru in* Calcutta — Toru's description of 
her garden — Her residence in Europe — Their return to 
India — Her first writings — Death of Aru — Publication of the 
Sheaf Gleaned in French Fields — Correspondence with 
Mile. Bader — Specimens of her poetry — Her novel — Our 
Casuarina Tree 240 

XX. 

GEORGE SAND. 

Her ancestors — Her grandmother— Childhood of George Sand 
— Her peculiar education — Convent life — Her religious belief 
— An accomplished young lady — Marries Dudevant — An ill- 
starred union — She removes to Paris — Her first writings — 
Success of Indiana — Other works — Alfred de Musset — Her 
political principles — Her closing years — Her works. . . 256 




CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN. 



CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN. 

4 T WAS born a tomboy ," wrote Miss Cushman once. 

1 By tomboy she meant that she was a girl who pre* 
ferred boys' plays, and had boy's faults. She did not care 
much to sew upon dolls' clothes, but could make dolls' 
furniture very nicely with tools. She was fond of climb- 
ing trees, and it was a custom with her in childhood to 
get out of the way of trouble by climbing to the top of a 
tall tree. In short, she was a vigorous, strong-limbed, 
courageous girl, who might have been the mother of heroes 
if it had not been her fortune to be a heroine herself. 

In 1816, when she was born, her father was a West 
India merchant, of the firm of Topliff & Cushman, who 
had a warehouse on Long Wharf in Boston. Her father, 
at the age of thirteen, was a poor orphan in Plymouth, 
Massachusetts, though a lineal descendant of Robert 
Cushman, one of the pilgrim fathers ; a descendant, too, 
of other Cushmans, whose honored graves I have seen 
upon Burial Hill, in Plymouth. Her father walked to 
Boston (thirty miles distant) while he was still a boy, and 
there, by industry and good conduct, saved a capital upon 
which he entered into business upon his own account, 
which enabled him for many years to maintain his family 
in comfort. Many a time Charlotte played the tomboy on 
Long Wharf, in and out of her father's store, climbing 
about vessels, and getting up on heaps of merchandise. 
Once, in jumping on board a vessel, she fell into the water, 
and was only rescued from drowning by a passer-by, who 
% 17 



CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN. 



sprang in and helped her out. Her deliverer kept on his 
way, and she never knew who he was until, many years 
later, when she was a celebrated actress, a respectable old 
gentleman called upon her and told her that he was the 
person, and how honored and delighted he was in having 
been the means of preserving so valuable a life. 

Two things may be said of all true artists. One is, 
that the germ of their talent can be discovered in one or 
more of their ancestors. Another is, that their gift mani- 
fests itself in very early childhood. More than one of 
her ancestors had wonderful powers of mimicry, as well 
as well as a happy talent for reading and declamation. 
One of her grandmothers possessed these gifts. While 
she was still a little girl Charlotte had a remarkable power 
of mimicry. Besides catching up a tune after once hear- 
ing it, she unconsciously imitated the tones, gestures, and 
expression of people she met ; and this talent she pre- 
served to the end of her life, greatly to the amusement of 
her friends. She was one of those people who can imitate 
the drawing of a cork, and give a lively representation 
with the mouth, of a hen chased about a barn-yard, and 
being finally caught. She could imitate all brogues and 
all kinds of voices. 

Born in Puritanic Boston, we should scarcely expect to 
find such a talent as this nourished and cultivated from 
her youth up. But so it was. From her mother she 
learned to sing all the songs of the day, and she learned 
to sing them with taste and expression. In those days 
almost every one sang a song or two, and a most delight- 
ful accomplishment it is. If ever I should found an 
academy I would have in it a teacher of song-singing. 
Miss Cushman was so lucky, too, as to have a good uncle 
— a sea captain — who used to take her to places of amuse- 
ment, and with him she saw her first play, Coriolanus, 
with Macready in the principal part. She saw many of 



CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN. 1 9 

the noted actors and actresses of that time, and the more 
frequently because her uncle was one of the stockholders 
of the old Tremont theatre. Through him, too, she 
became acquainted with some of the performers, and thus 
obtained a little insight into the world behind the curtain. 

Everything seems to nourish a marked talent in a child. 
One day at school, in the reading class, it came her turn 
to read a speech from Payne's tragedy of Brutus. Before 
that day she had been bashful about reading aloud in 
school, and had shown no ability in it whatever. When 
she began to read this speech her tongue seemed to be 
suddenly unloosed ; she let out all the power of her voice ; 
and she read with so much effect that the teacher told 
her to go to the head of the class. Miss Cushman always 
assigned the birth of her talent to the moment of her 
reading the passage from Brutus. The talent was in her 
before, but the glow of that speech warmed it into sudden 
development. 

After the war of 181 2, commerce, from various causes, 
declined in Boston; large numbers of merchants with- 
drew their capital from the sea, and invested it in manu- 
factures. Miss Cushman's father was one of those who 
did not take this course, and when she was thirteen years 
of age he failed, and she was obliged to think of prepar- 
ing to earn her own livelihood. Charlotte's gift for music 
suggested the scheme of her becoming a music-teaeher, 
and to this end she studied hard for two years under a 
very good master. When she was about sixteen years of 
age the famous Mrs. Wood came to Boston to perform in 
concert and opera, and while there inquired for a con- 
tralto voice to accompany her in some duets. Miss Cush- 
man's name was mentioned to her, and this led to a trial 
of the young gfrFs voice. Mrs. Wood was astonished 
and delighted at it, and told her that, with such a voice 
properly cultivated, a brilliant career was assured to her. 



20 CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN. 

After singing with Mrs. Wood in concerts with encourag- 
ing success, Miss Cushman appeared at Boston as the 
Countess in Mozart's Marriage of Figaro. Received by 
the public in this and other parts with favor, she seemed 
destined to fulfill Mrs. Wood's prediction. 

But a few months after, at New Orleans, her voice sud- 
denly deteriorated, and she was obliged to attempt the 
profession of an actress. She made her first appearance, 
while still little more than a girl, " a tall, thin, lanky girl," 
as she describes herself, in the difficult part of Lady Mac- 
beth, She was obliged to borrow a dress in which to per- 
form it, and she played the part, as she once recorded, 
" to the satisfaction of the audience, the manager, and 
the company." At the end of that season she came to 
New York, and, by dint of hard work and earnest study, 
she gradually became the great and powerful artist whom 
we all remember. Her biography, by her friend, Miss 
Emma Stebbins, reveals to us in the most agreeable man- 
ner the secret of her power as an actress, as well as the 
secret of her charm as a woman. Here is the secret, in 
in her own words : 

" How many there are who have a horror of my profes- 
sion ! Yet I dearly love the very hard work, the very 
drudgery of it, which has made me what I am. Despise 
labor of any kind ! I honor it, and only despise those 
who do not." 

I will copy two or three other sentences of hers, to 
show what a wise and high-minded lady she was : 

" The greatest power in the world is shown in conquest 
over self." 

" How hard it would be to die if we had all the joys 
and happiness that we could desire here ! The dews of 
autumn penetrate into the leaves and prepare them for 
their fall." 

44 We cannot break a law of eternal justice, howevei 



CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN. 21 

ignorantly, but throughout the entire universe there will 
be a jar of discord." 

" To try to be better is to be better." 

" God knows how hard I have striven in my time to be 
good, and true, and worthy. God knows the struggles I 
have had." 

" Art is an absolute mistress ; she will not be coquetted 
with, or slighted ; she requires entire self-devotion, and 
she repays with grand triumphs." 

But the best thing she ever wrote or said in her life 
was written to a young mother rejoicing in the glorious 
gift of a child. 

" No artist work," said Miss Cushman, " is so high, so 
noble, so grand, so enduring, so important for all time as 
the making of character in a child. No statue, no paint- 
ing, no acting, can reach it, and it embodies each and all 
the arts." 

That is truiy excellent, and is a truth which probably 
all genuine artists have felt ; for art has no right to be, 
except so far as it assists the best of all arts — the art of 
living. 

I remember this fine actress when I was a school-boy, 
at home from school, and she was a member of the com- 
pany of the old Park theatre in New York, acting for 
twenty dollars a week. I remember her playing Goneril, 
in King Lear, with so much power that I hated her, mak- 
ing no distinction between her and the part she played. 
New York was a very provincial place then, and could 
not give prestige to any artist, and therefore it was not 
until she went to England, and electrified the Londoners 
with her powerful acting, that she made any great head- 
way in the world ; although for years she had maintained 
her mother, and been the mainstay of the family. In 
England she made a considerable fortune, which, towards 
the close of her life, was much increased in her native 



22 CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN. 

land. She was always glad, in the days of her prosperity, 
to recall the period of poverty and anxiety which preceded 
her great success in England, when she was living in the 
vast, strange city of London, with no companion save her 
faithful maid, Sallie Mercer, with no present prospect of 
an engagement, and with almost no money. The strictest, 
severest economy was necessary ; and she used to relate 
with great amusement and no small pride the ingenious 
shifts to which she and Sallie were driven in matters of 
housekeeping, and how they both rejoiced over an occa- 
sional invitation to dine out. Sallie herself bears wit- 
ness to their straitened circumstances. 

" Miss Cushman lived on a mutton-chop a day," she once 
said, " and I always bought the baker's dozen of muffins 
for the sake of the extra, one, andi we ate them all, no 
matter how stale they were ; and we never suffered from 
want of appetite in those days." 

In spite of all their economies, things went from bad 
to worse, and Miss Cushman was actually reduced to her 
last sovereign, when Mr. Maddox, the manager of the 
Princess Theatre, came to secure her. Sallie, the devoted 
<*,nd acute (whom Miss Cushman had first engaged on 
account of what she called her " conscientious eyebrows "), 
was on the look-out, as usual, and descried him walking 
up and down the street upon the opposite side of the 
way, too early in the morning for a call. 

" He is anxious," said Miss Cushman joyfully, when 
this was reported to her. "I can make my own terms ! " 

She did so, and her d£but took place shortly afterward, 
her r61e being Bianca, in Milman's tragedy of Fazio. 
Her success was complete and dazzling. The London 
Times of the next day said of it : 

"The early part of the play affords no criterion of 
what an actress can do ; but from the instant where she 
suspects that her husband's affections are wavering, and 



CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN. 23 

with a flash of horrible enlightenment exclaims, ' Fazio, 
thou hast seen Aldobella ! ' Miss Cushman's career was 
certain. The variety which she threw into the dialogue 
with her husband — from jealousy dropping back into ten- 
derness, from hate passing to love, while she gave an 
equal intensity to each successive passion, as if her whole 
soul were for the moment absorbed in that only — was 
astonishing, and yet she always seemed to feel as if she 
had not done enough. Her utterance was more and 
more earnest, more and more rapid, as if she hoped the 
very force of the words would give her an impetus. The 
crowning effort was the supplication to Aldobella, when 
the wife, falling on her knees, makes the greatest sacrifice 
of her pride to save the man she has destroyed. Nothing 
could exceed the determination with which, lifting her 
clasped hands, she urged her suit — making offer after 
offer to her proud rival, as if she could not give too 
much and feared to reflect on the value of her conces- 
sions — till at last, repelled by the cold marchioness and 
exhausted by her own passion, she sank huddled into a 
heap at her feet." 

This was the climax of the play, and Miss Cushman 
was in reality so overcome by the tremendous force of 
her own acting, as well as by the agitation consequent 
upon the occasion, that it was long before sh could 
muster sufficient strength to rise; and the thunderous 
applause which burst from all parts of the house was 
even more welcome as granting her a breathing space 
than as an evidence of satisfaction. When at last she 
slowly rose to her feet, the scene was one which she could 
never afterward recall without experiencing a thrill of the 
old triumph. The audience were all standing, some 
mounted upon their seats ; many were sobbing ; more 
were cheering, and the gentlemen were waving their hats 
and the ladies their ha&ikerdiiefe. 



24 CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN. 

" All my successes put together since I have been upon 
the stage," she wrote home, " would not come near my 
success in London, and I only wanted some one of you 
thereto enjoy it with me, to make it complete," 

She and Sallie were no longer filled with gratitude for 
a chance invitation to dinner. Invitations came in show- 
ers, and they were overrun with visitors. It soon became 
a joke that Miss Cushman was never in a room with less 
thin six people. She sat to five artists, and distinguished 
people of all kinds overwhelmed her with attentions. 

" I hesitate to write even to you," she says in a letter 
to her mother, " the agreeable and complimentary things 
that are said and done to me here, for it looks monstrously 
like boasting. I like you to know it, but I hate to tell it 
to you myself." 

After a splendid career of success on both sides of the 
Atlantic, she took up her abode at Rome, returning occa- 
sionally to her native land. It so chanced that she was 
obliged to resume her Roman residence soon after the 
war broke out, and she deeply lamented that she was 
called away from her country at such a time. But she 
bore her share in the struggle. It is hard to imagine how 
she could have been spared from her post in Rome, where 
she was the light and consolation of the desponding little 
American colony. In the darkest days, when the news 
from home was of defeat following defeat, her faith never 
wavered for an instant. She was sure the Union cause 
would prove victorious. 

Her countrymen in the city called her " the Sunbeam " ; 
and in after days many of them confessed to having 
walked the streets again and again, in the mere hope of 
meeting her and getting a passing word of cheer. A year 
before this, in London, she held with her banker, Mr. 
Peabody, a little conversation which perhaps displays her 
feeling better than anything else. He told her that the 



CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN. 2$ 

war could not go on ; the business men of the world 
would not allow it 

" Mr. Peabody," she replied, " I saw that first Maine 
regiment that answered to Lincoln's call march down 
State Street in Boston with their chins in the air, singing : 
' John Brown's soul is marching on, ' 

and, believe me, this war will not end till slavery is 
abolished, whether it be in five years or thirty." 

In 1862, in a letter from Rome written when news of 
the early Union successes began at last to be received, she 
lets us perceive how sorely this high confidence had been 
tried. 

" It has been so hard," she wrote, " amid the apparent 
successes of the other side, the defection, the weakness 
of men on our side, the willingness of even the best to 
take advantage of the needs of the government, the 
ridicule of sympathizers with the South on this side, the 
abuse of the English journals, and the utter impossibility 
of beating into the heads of individual English that there 
could be no right in the seceding party — all has been so 
hard, and we have fought so valiantly for our faith, have 
so tired and tried ourselves in talking and showing our 
belief, that when the news came day after day of our 
successes, and at last your letter, I could not read the 
account aloud, and tears — hot but refreshing tears of joy, 
fell copiously upon the page. 0, 1 am too thankful ; and 
I am too anxious to come home ! . . . I never cared half 
so much for America before ; but I feel that now I love 
it dearly, and want to see it and live in it." 

To live in it was impossible just then, but the long- 
ing to see it became too strong to be resisted. She 
resolved to return at least long enough to act for the 
benefit of the Sanitary Fund ; and in June, 1863, she 
Bailed for home. Five performances were given — one 



26 CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN. 

each in New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and 
Washington — and were so successful that she had the 
pleasure of sending to Dr, Bellows, president of the Sani- 
tary Commission, from the vessel in which she left to 
return to Europe, a check for the sum of eight thousand 
two hundred and sixty-seven dollars. 

" I know no distinction of North, Bast, South, or West," 
she wrote in the letter which accompanied this generous 
gift ; " it is all my country, and where there is most 
need, there do I wish the proceeds of my labor to be 
given." 

One more extract, taken from a letter written to Miss 
Fanny Seward when the final triumph came, may fittingly 
close Miss Cushman's record as a patriot. It is her song 
of exultation : 

" With regard to my own dearly beloved land, of which 
I am so proud that my heart swells and my eyes brim 
over as I think to-day of her might, her majesty, and the 
power of her long-suffering, her abiding patience, her 
unequaled unanimity, her resolute prudence, her ina- 
bility to recognize bondage and freedom in our constitu- 
tion, and her stalwart strength in forcing that which she 
could not obtain by reasoning. . . . To-day my pride, my 
faith, my love of country, is blessed and satisfied in the 
news that has flashed to us that ' the army of Lee has 
capitulated!' that we are and must be one sole, undi- 
vided — not common, but tmeommon — country; great, 
glorious, free; henceforth an honor and a power among 
nations, a sign and a symbol to the down-trodden peoples, 
and a terror to evil-doers upon earth." 

After a long period of retirement, she returned to the 
scene of her former triumphs. People wondered why she 
should continue to act during her last years, when she 
was tormented by the pain of an incurable disease, and 
when she had a beautiful home at Newport, where there 



CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN. 2J 

was everything to cheer and charm her declining years. 
A single sentence in one of her last letters explains it, 
wherein she says: 

"I am suffering a good deal more pain than I like to 
acknowledge, and only when I am on the stage or asleep 
am I unconscious of it." 

She died at Boston in 1876, aged sixty. There have 
been a few greater actresses than Charlotte Cushman, but 
a better woman never trod the stage. The very soul of 
goodness dwelt in her heart, and inspired her life. 



MARIA MITCHELL. 

PROFESSOR MARIA MITCHELL, the distinguished 
astronomer, whose face is so vividly remembered by 
Vassar students of recent years, is of Quaker parentage, 
and a native of the island of Nantucket. 

She was born on the first of August, 1818, one of a 
numerous family. During her childhood she attended 
with her brothers and sisters, the school taught by their 
father, who had the pleasure of finding them his best 
pupils. The little Mitchells, quick and intelligent as they 
showed themselves to be, were as well constituted physic- 
ally as mentally; they romped, raced, and shouted as 
healthy children do. In appearance they differed widely, 
some being fair-haired and of blonde complexion, while 
others were strongly marked brunettes ; but all possessed 
the family characteristics of intelligence and perseverance. 
They were, as one of them afterwards expressed it, " all 
alike inside." Maria, a brown-skinned, dark-eyed, lively 
little girl, was not considered by the family to display any 
greater ability than the others, although at the age of 
eleven, while still her father's pupil, she became his 
assistant teacher. Nor did she rate her intellectual gifts 
as highly as without vanity she might. 

" Born of only ordinary capacity, but of extraordinary 
persistency," she said of herself in later years, looking 
back upon her career. But she added with a simplicity 
as rare as it is pleasing : 

" I did not quite take this in myself, until I came to 

28 




MARIA MITCHELL. 



MARIA MITCHELL. 3 1 

mingle with the best girls of our college, and go be aware 
how rich their mines are, and how little they have been 
worked." 

Her education, both in and out of school, was of the 
best and most suitable kind. In the intelligent home of 
which she was a member the news of the day was eagerly 
gathered and discussed ; scientific topics received a fair 
share of attention; and many strange facts, not to be 
found in books, were related and commented upon. She 
learned, moreover, to use her hands helpfully and skill- 
fully, to dress tastefully but simply, and to live con- 
tentedly a plain, frugal life, brightened by study, affec- 
tion, and society. She had many good friends upon the 
island, and visitors of distinction who landed upon its 
shores seldom failed to call at her father's house, where a 
hospitable welcome awaited them, as well as the pleasure 
of imparting whatever store of knowledge or anecdote 
they might possess to a group of curious young people 
with a gift for listening. 

At sixteen she left school, and at eighteen accepted the 
position of librarian of the Nantucket library. Her duties 
were light, and she had ample opportunity, surrounded as 
she was by books, to read and study, while leisure was 
also left her to pursue by practical observation the science 
in which she afterwards became known. 

Those who dwell upon the smaller islands learn almost 
of necessity to study the sea and sky. The Mitchell family 
possessed an excellent telescope. Prom childhood Maria 
had been accustomed to the use of this instrument, search- 
ing out with its aid the distant sails upon the horizon by 
day, and viewing the stars by night. Her father possessed 
a marked taste for astronomy, and carried on a series of 
independent observations. He taught his daughter all 
he knew, and she studied for herself besides. 

At half past ten in the evening, on the first of October, 



3 2 MARIA MITCHELL. 

1847, she made the discovery which first brought her 
name before the public. She was gazing through her 
glass with her usual quiet intentness, when suddenly she 
was startled to perceive " an unknown comet, nearly ver- 
tical above Polaris, about five degrees." At first she 
could not believe her eyes ; then hoping and doubting, 
scarcely daring to think that she had really made a dis- 
covery, she obtained its right ascension and declination. 
She then told her father, who, two days later, sent the 
following letter to his friend, Professor Bond of Cam- 
bridge : 

Nantucket, 10th mo., 3d, 1847. 
My dear Friend :~- 1 write now merely to say that Maria 
discovered a telescopic comet at half-past ten, on the 
evening of the first instant, at that hour nearly above 
Polaris five degrees. Last evening it had advanced west- 
erly ; this evening still further, and nearing the pole. It 
does not bear illumination. Maria has obtained its right 
ascension and declination, and will not suffer me to 
announce it. Pray tell me whether it is one of Georgi's ; if 
not whether it has been seen by anybody. Maria sup- 
poses it may be an old story. If quite convenient just 
drop a line to her ; it will oblige me much. I expect to 
leave home in a day or two, and shall be in Boston next 
week, and I would like to have her hear from you before 
I can meet you. I hope it will not give thee much 
trouble amidst thy close engagements. Our regards are 

to all of you most truly, 

William Mitchell. 

The answer to this letter informed them that the comet 
was indeed a discovery. Meanwhile it had been observed 
by several other astronomers, including Father da Vico 
at Rome, and another lady, Madam Hunker, at Hamburg ; 
but Miss Mitchell was able to prove without difficulty that 
6he had been the first to observe it. There was another 



MARIA MITCHELL. 33 

thing to be considered, however. Frederick VI of Den- 
mark had, about fifteen years before this time, established 
a gold medal of twenty ducats' value to be bestowed upon 
any person who should first discover a telescopic comet ; 
and this prize Miss Mitchell might fairly claim. But the 
provisions concerning the award required that the dis- 
coverer should comply with several conditions. " If a 
resident of Great Britain or any other quarter of the globe 
except the continent of Europe," he was to send notice, " by 
first post after the discovery," to the astronomer-royal of 
London. 

Miss Mitchell, desiring to be certain that her discovery 
was indeed original, had omitted to do this, and she was 
therefore in doubt whether she might claim the medal. 
But as the intent of this neglected formality could have 
been nothing more than to insure the medal's falling into 
the right hands, and as proof existed tbat she was the 
earliest discoverer, she succeeded, with the assistance of 
Edward Everett, who warmly took her part, in obtaining 
her well-merited distinction. 

For ten years after this event she retained her position 
in the library, faithfully discharging her duty toward the 
institution, and at .the same time performing, to the satis- 
faction of the government, much difficult mathematical 
work in connection with the coast survey. She also 
assisted in the compilation of the American Nautical 
Almanac. 

In 1857 she went abroad and visited most of the 
famous observatories of Europe. She was everywhere 
received with distinction, and acquired the friendship of 
many of the leading astronomers of the day, besides 
being elected a member of several important scientific 
societies. On her return home she had the pleasure of 
finding that her friends had caused an excellent observa- 
tory to be fitted up for her in her absence, and here she 



34 MARIA MITCHELL. 

continued her astronomical pursuits until tho year 1865, 
when she was invited to become Professor of Astronomy 
at Vassar College, in the State of New York. She did 
not feel certain that she could suitably fill this interest- 
ing post, and hesitated some time before accepting it. It 
is certain that the institution has never regretted her 
favorable decision. 

She at once proved herself an excellent teacher, and 
the course in astronomy soon came to be regarded as 
one of the pleasantest, as well as one of the best that the 
college afforded. It is elective and informal, her classes 
being the only ones that are not begun and ended at the 
tap of an electric gong. The course consists, besides a 
few lectures in the Sophomore year, of regular lessons 
during the Junior and Senior years. It is chiefly practi- 
cal and mathematical ; including, however, some popular 
astronomy. The practical portion is that which most 
interests the professor, who is continually urging her 
pupils to use their eyes. She encourages them to make 
use also of the smaller telescopes every fair night, and 
allows the Seniors some independent use of the great 
Equatorial telescope in the observatory. She is apt to 
display some anxiety on these occasions, however, and 
seldom fails to warn a student who is going up to take 
an observation, not to hit her head against the telescope. 
Her fears, as she explains, are not for the head, but for 
the instrument. Drawings of the observations are inva- 
riably required. 

In class, Miss Mitchell is abrupt but kindly, expecting 
and obtaining from each student the best that she can 
do. With the plodding, modest girl, possessed of no 
brilliant qualities, but willing to work, she is always 
patient, and ready to give encouragement and assistance. 
To the superficial and the conceited she shows little 
mercy, considering it a part of her duty to abate their 



MARIA MITCHELL. 35 

vanity. She has, as a Vassar girl remarks, "little 
patience with fancy theories." 

She lodges at the observatory with one or two assist- 
ants, and takes her meals at the college. Men are 
employed at the observatory only for heavy lifting, 
all the intellectual work being accomplished by Miss 
Mitchell and her students. It is the duty of one of these 
to photograph the sun at noon every pleasant day, and 
daily observations are several times taken upon the tem- 
perature, clouds, and rainfall. 

Miss Mitchell's "Dome Party" which recurs every 
June a few days before commencement, is the unique 
social event of the college year. All present and former 
students who are in town receive an invitation to attend, 
and are expected to appear with mathematical accuracy 
at the appointed hour. The guests are received in a 
pretty parlor, whose furniture satisfies the requirements 
of both society and science. Behind a railing at one 
end stand the chronograph and sidereal clock, while 
between them in a window framed with vines, is placed 
a bust of Mrs. Somerville, presented to the college by 
Frances Power Cobbe. Near by are two tall bookcases 
containing a miscellaneous collection of books, including 
a little of everything from poetry to the Principia. 

When all have arrived breakfast is announced, and the 
company form in a procession, ranging themselves accord- 
ing to the year of graduation. Two large baize doors 
then swing open, and the party, mounting a short flight 
of stairs, find themselves in the dome itself, with the 
great equatorial telescope overhead, pointing to tlje sky. 
Here the repast is served, upon tables arranged in a 
circle around the walls, a rosebud and a tiny photograph 
of the dome being laid at each plate. The meal is pleas- 
ant both to the palate and to the social sense ; but it is 
not until the tables are cleared that the most enjoyable 
part of the entertainment begins. 



3 6 MARIA MITCHELL. 

Every one receives a motto paper, containing a few 
amusing lines about some membei of the company, writ- 
ten by Miss Mitchell or her assistants. These are often 
witty but never caustic, and their reading is productive 
of much mirth. When they have all been read, the host- 
ess brings out a good sized basket which, during the few 
days preceding the dome party, has been filled with some- 
what similar effusions, dropped in anonymously by college 
poets. Songs follow, by the "Pleiades" Glee Club, and 
to this impromptu rhyming by those present succeeds, 
the subjects selected being personal or scientific, and the 
best verses composed are hastily set to familiar tunes, 
and sung by a chorus of girls perched above their fellows 
on the movable observatory stairs. Sometimes the spirit 
of poetizing becomes so prevalent that no one speaks 
except in rhyme, Miss Mitchell herself, whom all pro- 
nounce to be the most delightful of hostesses, bearing a 
leading part in the game. 

Beside her constant and successful labors in teaching, 
the public is indebted to Miss Mitchell for several import- 
ant essays upon scientific subjects. Until a short time 
ago she edited the Astronomical Notes in the Scientific 
American. These appeared every month, and were based 
on calculations made by her students. At one time also 
she made a journey to Colorado to observe a solar eclipse. 
At another she had traveled as far as Providence on her 
way to visit friends in Boston, when she learned of the 
discovery of a new comet, and at once renounced the 
expedition and returned to Vassar to observe it. For 
five nights all went well ; on the sixth a large apple tree 
obstructed her view, but she promptly summoned a man 
to cut it down, and carried her observations to a satisfac- 
tory conclusion. 

She has always been noted for her liberal and enlight- 
ened opinions upon religious and social affairs, and has 



MARIA MITCHELL. 37 

taken of course deep interest in the advancement of her 
sex. She once read before the Society for the Advance- 
ment of Women an interesting paper upon the Collegiate 
Education of Girls, a subject which few people could be 
more competent than she to discuss. She is a member of 
the New England Women's Club of Boston, which in the 
winter of 1881-2 held a reception in her honor, and, 
moreover, voted that the same tribute should be rendered 
to her yearly. The meeting, it was decided, should be 
held in the holidays between Christmas and New Year's, 
and the day should be called " Maria Mitchell's Day." 



MRS. TROLLOPE. 

CINCINNATI, fifty-five years ago, was a city of twenty 
thousand inhabitants. As the center of the grow- 
ing business of the Ohio valley, it enjoyed a European 
celebrity which drew to it many emigrants, and some 
visitors of capital and education. The Trollope family, 
since so famous in literature, were living there at that 
time in a cottage just under the bluff which overhangs 
the town. Fresh from England, and retaining all their 
English love of nature and out-of-door exercise, the whole 
family, parents, two sons and two daughters, often climbed 
that lofty and umbrageous height, since pierced by an 
elevator, and now crowned by one of the most beautiful 
streets in the world. 

Mrs. Trollope, her two daughters, and her second son, 
Henry, then a lad of twelve, had reached Cincinnati by 
the Mississippi River, and were joined there afterwards by 
her eldest son and her husband, who was a London 
lawyer of some distinction. In her work upon the 
"Domestic Manners of the Americans," the lady does 
not mention the motive of this visit to America. We 
have the liberty of guessing it. She was an ardent friend 
of Miss Frances Wright, an English lady of fortune and 
benevolence, who came to this country with the Trollopes 
in 1827, with the view of founding a Communal Home 
according to the ideas of Owen and Fourier. Miss Wright 
afterwards lectured in New York and elsewhere, but her 
ideas were deemed erroneous and romantic, and she had 
38 



MRS. TROLLOPE. 39 

very little success in gaining adherents. She was part 
of the movement which led to Brook Farm, New Har- 
mony, and similar establishments founded on principles 
which work beautifully so long as they are confined to the 
amiable thoughts of their founders. 

It is probable that Mrs. Trollope, without being a 
dreamer of this school, came to America a sentimental 
republican, expecting to find here the realization of a 
dream not less erroneous than thai of Frances Wright. 
She was wofully disappointed. In New Orleans, where 
she landed, she saw slavery, and shuddered at the 
spectacle. 

"At the sight," she says, " of every negro man, woman, 
and child that passed, my fancy wove some little romance 
of misery as belonging to each of them; since I have 
known more on the subject, and become better acquainted 
with their real situation in America, I have often smiled 
at recalling what I then felt." 

This was one great shock. She was, perhaps, not less 
offended, as an Englishwoman and the daughter of a 
clergyman of the church of England, to find that the 
white people were living together on terms approaching 
social equality. She found in New Orleans a milliner 
holding a kind of levee in her shop, to whom she waa 
formally introduced, and who spoke of the French fashions, 
to the ladies, and of metaphysics to the gentlemen. Mrs- 
Trollope was not severely afflicted at this instance of 
republican equality ; but the free and easy manners pre- 
vailing on board of the Mississippi steamboats disgusted 
her entirely, particularly the frightful expectorating of 
the men, and their silent voracity at the dinner table. 

And here she fell into her great mistake. She attribu- 
ted the crude provincialisms of American life to the 
institutions of the country, and not their true cause, the 
desperate struggle in which the people were engaged with 



4° MRS. TROLLOPE. 

savage nature. If she had carried out her original inten- 
tion, and passed some months with Miss Wright on the 
tract of primeval wilderness which that lady bought in 
Tennessee, she might have learned what it costs to settle 
and subdue a virgin continent. She might have dis- 
covered that when human beings subdue the wilderness, 
the wilderness wreaks a revenge upon them in making 
them half wild. Many of the arts of domestic life are 
lost in the struggle. Grace of manners is lost. The art 
of cookery is lost. Comfort is forgotten. Men may gain 
in rude strength, but must lose in elegance and agreeable- 
ness. Mrs. Trollope, whether from perversity or want of 
penetration, perceived nothing of this, and conceived for 
the people of the United States an extreme repugnance. 

" I do not like them," she frankly wrote, after a stay 
among us of three or four years. " I do not like their 
principles, I do not like their manners, I do not like their 
opinions, I do not like their government." 

She expanded these sentiments into two highly amusing 
volumes, which contain some pure truth, some not unfair 
burlesque, and an amount of misstatement, misconception, 
prejudice, and perversity absolutely without example. She 
had her work illustrated with a dozen or two of carica- 
tures, not ill-executed, which can now be inspected as 
curious relics of antiquity. In America half a century 
ago is antiquity. 

But I left the Trollopes in Cincinnati in 1828, father, 
mother, and four children. They had then been in the 
country more than a year, quite long enough for Mrs. 
Trollope to discover that Cincinnati had little in common 
with the republic of her dreams. She had had enough 
of America. How she abhorred and detested Cincinnati, 
the first place at which she had halted long enough for 
much observation ! She says : 

"Were I an English legislator, instead of sending 



MRS. TR0LL0PE. 4* 

Sedition to the Tower, I would send her to make a tour of 
the United States. I had a little leaning towards sedition 
myself when I set out, but before I had half completed 
my tour I was quite cured." 

She admits that everybody at Cincinnati had as much 
pork, beef, hominy, and clothes as the animal man 
required. Every one reveled in abundance. But — 

"The total and universal want of manners, both in 
males and females, is so remarkable, that I was constantly 
endeavoring to account for it." 

She was sure it did not proceed from want of intellect. 
On the contrary, the people of Cincinnati appeared to her 
to have clear heads and active minds. But — 

" There is no charm, no grace in their conversation. I 
very seldom, during my whole stay in the country, heard 
a sentence elegantly turned and correctly pronounced 
from the lips of an American." 

She gives her recollections of the evening parties in 
Cincinnati sixty years ago : 

" The women invariably herd together at one part of 
the room, and the men at the other ; but in justice to 
Cincinnati, I must acknowledge that this arrangement is 
by no means peculiar to that city, or to the western side 
of the Alleghanies. Sometimes a small attempt at music 
produces a partial reunion; a few of the most daring 
youths, animated by the consciousness of curled hair and 
smart waistcoats, approached the piano-forte, and began 
to mutter a little to the half-grown pretty things, who 
are comparing with one another 'how many quarters' 
music they have had.' Where the mansion is of sufficient 
dignity to have two drawing-rooms, the piano, the little 
ladies, and the slender gentlemen are left to themselves, 
and on such occasions the sound of laughter is often 
heard to issue from among them. But the fate of the more 
dignified personages, who are left in the other room, is 



4 2 MRS. TROLLOPE. 

extremely dismal. The gentlemen spit, talk of elections 
and the price of produce, and spit again. The ladies 
look at each other's dresses till they know every pin by 
heart ; talk of parson somebody's last sermon on the day 
of judgment, on Dr. t'otherbody's new pills for dyspepsia, 
till the " tea " is announced, when they will all console 
themselves for whatever they may have suffered in keep- 
ing awake, by taking more tea, coffee, hot cake, and 
custard, hoe cake, johnny cake, waffle cake, and dodger 
cake, pickled peaches, and preserved cucumbers, ham, 
turkey, hung beef, apple sauce, and pickled oysters, than 
ever were prepared in any other country of the known 
world. After this massive meal is over, they return to 
the drawing-room, and it always appeared to me that they 
remained together as long as they could bear it, and then 
they rise en masse, cloak, bonnet, shawl, and exit." 

One day of the year in America she enjoyed, namely, 
the Fourth of July, because on that day the people around 
her seemed to be happy, and on that day alone. 

" To me," she remarks, " the dreary coldness and want 
of enthusiasm in American manners is one of their great- 
est defects, and I therefore hailed the demonstrations of 
general feeling which this day elicits with real pleasure. 
On the Fourth of July, the hearts of the people seem to 
awaken from a three hundred and sixty-four days' sleep ; 
they appear high-spirited, gay, animated, social, generous, 
or at least liberal in expense ; and would they but refrain 
from spitting on that hallowed day, I should say that on 
the Fourth of July, at least, they appeared to be an 
amiable people. It is true that the women have little to 
do with tlie pageantry, the splendor, or the gayety of the 
day ; but, setting this defect aside* it was indeed a glorious 
sight to behold a jubilee so heartfelt as this ; and had 
they not the bad taste and bad feeling to utter an annual 
oration, with unvarying abuse of the mother country, 



MRS. TROLLOPE. 43 

to say nothing of the warlike manifesto called the 
Declaration of Independence, our gracious king himself 
might look upon the scene and say that it was good ; nay, 
even rejoice, that twelve millions of bustling bodies, at 
four thousand miles distance from his throne and his 
altars, should make their own laws, and drink their own 
tea, after the fashion that pleased them best." 

In the city of New York she found more agreeable 
society, but even there she thought the ladies were terri- 
bly under the influence of fanatical ideas. She spent a 
Sunday afternoon at Hoboken, and describes what she 
saw there : 

" The price of entrance to this little Eden is the six 
cents you pay at the ferry. We went there on a bright 
Sunday afternoon, expressly to see the humors of the 
place. Many thousand persons were scattered through 
the grounds ; of these we ascertained, by repeatedly 
counting, that nineteen-twentieths were men. The ladies 
were at church. Often as the subject has pressed upon 
my mind, I think I never so strongly felt the conviction 
that the Sabbath-day, the holy day, the day on which 
alone the great majority of the Christian world can spend 
their hours as they please, is ill passed (if passed entirely) 
within brick walls, listening to an earth-born preacher, 
charm he never so wisely. 

"How is it that the men of America, who are reckoned 
good husbands and good fathers, while they themselves 
enjoy sufficient freedom of spirit to permit their walking 
forth into the temple of the living God, can leave those 
they love best on earth, bound in the iron chains of a 
most tyrannical fanaticism ? How can they breathe the 
balmy air, and not think of the tainted atmosphere so 
heavily weighing upon breasts still dearer than their own ? 
How can they gaze upon the blossoms of the spring, and 
not remember the fairer cheeks of their young daughters, 



44 MRS. TROLLOPE. 

waxing pale, as they sit for long, sultry hours, immured 
with hundreds of fellow victims, listening to the roaring 
vanities of a preacher canonized by a college of old 
women ? They cannot think it needful to salvation, or 
they would not withdraw themselves. Wherefore is it ? 
Do they fear these self-elected, self-ordained priests, and 
offer up their wives and daughters to propitiate them ? 
Or do they deem their hebdomadal freedom more com- 
plete because their wives and daughters are shut up four 
or five times in the day at church or chapel ? " 

But enough of these specimens. The republic being 
insupportable, and Mrs. Trollope's Diary being still 
incomplete, it was necessary for the family to come to a 
resolution. Their eldest son, Thomas Adolphus, nineteen 
years of age, was old enough to be entered at Oxford 
University, and it was necessary for his father to go with 
him to England. After family consultations, they 
resolved upon a brief separation, the father and eldest 
son to go to England, the mother with her two daughters 
and younger son to visit the Eastern portions of the 
country, and fill up the Diary. That second son, then 
about fourteen years of age, was Henry Trollope, after- 
wards the famous English novelist, whose recent death 
was lamented in America not less than in England. 

No sooner had they come to this resolution than a piece 
of news reached Cincinnati which induced the gentlemen 
to postpone their departure. General Jackson, President- 
elect, was on his triumphal journey to Washington, and 
was expected to stop a few hours at Cincinnati on his 
way up the Ohio. They determined to wait and get pas- 
sage on board of the steamboat that bore so distinguished 
a personage. Mrs. Trollope and her family walked down 
to the landing to see the arrival of the old hero, and she 
almost enjoyed the spectacle. 

" The noble steamboat which conveyed him was flanked 



MRS. TROLLOPE. 45 

on each side by one of nearly equal size and splendor ; 
the roofs of all three were covered by a crowd of men ; 
cannon saluted them from the shore as they passed by to 
the distance of a quarter of a mile above the town. 
There they turned about and came down the river with a 
rapid but stately motion, the three vessels so close 
together as to appear one mighty mass upon the water/' 

Mrs. Trollope was so happy as to catch a view of the 
Hero of New Orleans as he walked bareheaded between a 
silent lane of people on his way from the steamboat to 
the hotel, where'he was to hold a reception. 

" He wore his gray hair carelessly," she remarks, " but 
not ungracefully arranged, and, spite of his harsh, gaunt 
features, he looks like a gentleman and a soldier." 

Her husband and her son conversed much with the 
general on board the steamboat. 

" They were pleased," she says, " by his conversation 
and manners, but deeply disgusted by the brutal familiar- 
ity to which they saw him exposed at every place on 
their progress at which they stopped." } 

Mrs. Trollope and her children returned to England in 
1830, carrying with her, as she tejls us, six hundred 
pages of manuscript notes similar to the specimens I have 
given. They were speedily published, ran through three 
editions in three months, were republished in New York, 
and called forth an amount of comment of all kinds, from 
eulogistic to vituperative, which has rarely been paral- 
leled. The work set her up in the business of an author- 
ess. She followed it by a very long list of works of 
travel and fiction, most of which were tolerably suc- 
cessful. 

Both her sons became voluminous writers, and some of 
her grandchildren 1 believe, have written books. Her 
husband, too, is the author of legal works and a History 
of the Church, If all the works produced by this family 



46 MRS. TROLLOPE. 

during the last sixty years were gathered together in 
their original editions, they would make a library of five 
or six hundred volumes. Several English journalists 
have been counting up the works of the late Anthony 
Trollope. If at some future time a compiler of statistics 
should take the census of the people he called into being 
on the printed page, it will be found that he was the 
author of more population than some of our Western 
counties can boast. 

Anthony Trollope was born in 1815, but as he did not 
begin to publish till 1847, when he was thirty-two years 
of age, he was a public writer for thirty-five years, and' 
during that period he gave the world fifty-nine works, of 
which thirty-seven were full-fledged novels. Some of his 
publications, such as his life of Cicero, and others, 
involved a good deal of research, and all of them show 
marks of careful elaboration. They give us the impres- 
sion that, if ever he failed in his purpose, it was not from 
any lack of painstaking in the author. 

This amount of literary labor would be reckoned 
extraordinary if he had done nothing else in his life. 
When we learn that until within the last eight years he 
held an important and responsible post in the English 
Post-office department, which obliged him to give attend- 
ance during business hours, from eleven to four, and that 
he was frequently sent on long journeys and ocean 
voyages on Post-office business, involving many months' 
continuous absence, we may well be amazed at the cata- 
logue of his publications. 

Of late years, too, he was constantly in society, a fre- 
quent diner out, a welcome guest everywhere, as well as 
a familiar personage in the hunting-field. Hunting was 
his favorite recreation, as walking was that of Charles 
Dickens. Like most Englishmen, he loved the country, 
country interests, and country sports. For many years, 



MRS. TROLLOPE. 47 

although a stout man, difficult to mount, he rode after 
the hounds three times a week during the hunting season. 
His readers do not need to be told that he utilized his 
hunting experience in working out his novels. His 
knowledge of horse-flesh was something like Sam Weller's 
knowledge of London, " both extensive and peculiar," for 
lie was obliged to look sharply to the points of a horse 
destined to gallop and leap under more than two hundred 
pounds' weight. A reader cannot go far in his pages 
without being reminded that he was a horseman and a 
hunter. 

All this increases the wonder excited by the mere 
number of his printed works. How did he execute them ? 
and above all, when did he execute them ? 

He was often in this country, mingling freely with lit- 
erary men, and he more than once in New York described 
his daily routine. He rose so early in the morning as to 
sit down to write at five o'clock, and he wrote steadily on 
until eight. He had such complete command of his 
powers that he could depend upon producing a certain 
number of pages every morning. He rarely failed to do 
his stint. It made little difference whether the scene 
under his hand was of a tranquil or a thrilling nature, 
whether he was writing the critical chapter of his work 
or one of its most commonplace portions. He wrote his 
daily number of pages before people in general had sat 
down to breakfast, and having done so, he laid his manu- 
script aside, and thought no more of it till the next 
morning. 

He told the late Mr. George Ripley that he could pro- 
duce in this way two long novels per annum, for which he 
received (if I remember rightly) three thousand guineas 
each, or fifteen thousand dollars each. This was certainly 
doing very well, and deprives him of any excuse for over- 
working. One of his friends writes in the London Time*: 



48 MRS. TR0LL0PE. 

" We can not resist a melancholy suspicion that if he 
had relaxed a little sooner he might have been spared to 
us longer. Anxiety, rather than actual work, may have 
been injurious, when he began to grow nervous under tho 
strain of keeping engagements against time." 

Not one man in many thousands could have lived his 
life for a single year without destruction. Nature had 
given him an admirable constitution. He had a sound 
digestion, tranquil nerves, a cheerful disposition, and a 
taste for rural pleasures. He should have lived to " four 
score and upward." 

America may claim some property in this gifted and 
genial man. He used to berate us soundly (and justly, 
too) for republishing his works without paying him copy- 
right for the same. I have the impression, however, that 
he owed his place in the Post-office, in an indirect way, 
to the American people. We have seen above that as a 
boy of twelve, he arrived with his mother and sisters, on 
Christmas day, 182T, at the mouth of the Mississippi, and 
made with them a three years' tour of the United States. 
It is possible tnat he may have assisted in the drawing of 
the comic pictures with which his mother enlivened her 
work upon the " Domestic Manners of the Americans," 
and doubtless he had his share in the numberless anec- 
dotes that figure in its pages. The youth escorted his 
mother to some of those "large evening parties" which 
she describes, where there was " no ecartS, no chess, very 
little music, and that lamentably bad," and where "to eat 
inconceivable quantities of cake, ice, and pickled oysters, 
and to show half their revenue in silks and satins, seemed 
to be the chief object of the ladies." 

We are sure that he passed, with his mother, those 
14 four days of excitement and fatigue at Niagara," where, 
as she says, " we drenched ourselves in spray, we cut our 
feet on the rocks, we blistered our faces in the sun, we 



MRS. TROLLOPE. 49 

looked up the cataract and down the cataract, we perched 
ourselves on every pinnacle we could find, we dipped our 
fingers in the flood at a few yards' distance from its 
thundering fall." In all these delights the future novelist 
had his part. 

Let us hope, too, that he shared with his parent the 
pleasure she took in the Hudson River, in Manhattan 
Island, and even in the city of New York, a city which 
she really seemed to enjoy. At that time, 1830, Man- 
hattan Island was one of the most beautiful suburban 
regions in the world. It was dotted all over with pretty 
villas and cottages, and showed many a stately mansion 
on the slopes of the two rivers. Greenwich, Blooming- 
dale, Yorkville, and Harlem were pleasant country vil- 
lages. The island was New York and Newport in one. 
Anthony Trollope heard of these agreeable scenes, and, 
possibly, shared the indignation of his mother on being 
charged by a New York hackman two dollars and a half 
for a twenty minutes' ridp. 

But how did we render him a pecuniary benefit ? When 
his mother published in London her satirical work, it was 
hailed by the enemies of republicanism with delight. They 
seem to have felt that American principles were discredited 
forever. I think it highly probable that the son of the 
authoress owed his appointment in the Post-office to the 
favor in which the work was held by the appointing 
power. 

England had not then reformed her civil service so as 
to make appointments depend on the comparative merit 
of applicants. But she has always known enough to 
retain in her service men of intelligence and capacity. 
Having got Anthony Trollope, she kept him during all the 
best years of his life, and then gave him honorable retire- 
ment. It was he who completed the postal arrangements 
between this country and Great Britain, by which it is 



50 MRS. TR0LL0PE. 

quite as easy, and almost as cheap, to send a letter to 
any part of the British empire as it is from New York to 
Albany. 

That is the substance of a true civil service : first, get 
a man, and then keep him. 

Mrs: Trollope died in Florence in 1863, aged eighty- 
three years. In private life she was a very friendly and 
good soul, much admired and sought in the society of 
Florence, where she passed the last twenty years of her 
long life. 




ADELAIDE PHILLIPS. 






ADELAIDE PHILLIPS. 

AT the tender age of eight years, Miss Phillips was 
already an actress. She never knew why her 
parents chose that profession for her, nor could she 
remember her first appearance. Her earliest recollec- 
tion of the theatre dated back to some play in which she 
was required to jump out of a window. She feared to 
take the leap ; she hesitated, until an actor standing at 
the wings held up a big orange before her eyes, an 
inducement which she could not resist. She jumped, 
was caught safely in his arms, and received the fruit as 
her reward. 

Miss Phillips, whose family ties all bound her to 
America, and the greater part of whose professional 
career was passed in this country, scarcely liked to 
acknowledge that she was not an American. She was 
born in England, at Stratford-on-Avon, about the year 
1835 ; her father English, her mother Welsh. When she 
was seven years of age her family came to America, 
going first to Canada, and thence to Boston, where they 
established their home. It was in this city that the little 
girl made her debnt in .January, 1842, appearing at the 
Tremont Theatre in the comedy of "Old and Young," 
in which she was required to personate five characters, 
and introduce several songs and dances. A year later 
she joined the Boston Museum and amused the public 
with her representation of " Little Pickle " in " The 
Spoiled Child," and soon after she was promoted to take 
-4 53 



54 ADELAIDE PHILLIPS. 

part in a number of fairy spectacles. With the company 
her bright sayings, her simple manners, and obliging 
temper made her a favorite. 

" They were so kind to me," she said in later years ; 
" they took such care of me, for I was but a child when 
I first appeared there, so much of a child that I used to 
drive my hoop back and forth to the rehearsals. The 
work was play to me ; I learned my parts easily and was 
petted and praised, which was very pleasant." 

She was so much a child, too, that one day she arrived 
at the theatre crying so bitterly that for some time she 
was unable to explain what was the matter. Her trouble 
proved to be that a beautiful doll in a shop window that 
she passed every day, a doll which she had set her heart 
upon possessing, had that morning vanished from its 
usual station. Somebody else had bought it, and Ade- 
laide was disconsolate. It was long before she could be 
comforted, and her happiness was not fully restored until 
the good-natured stage-manager presented her with 
another doll, even prettier than the one she had longed 
for. 

As she grew older she had many characters assigned 
her, and worked faithfully in her profession. A farce 
always followed the play in those days, and she frequently 
appeared in both. Often, too, she sustained a part in 
fairy spectacles such as Fair Star and Cinderella— pieces 
in which her graceful dancing as well as her beautiful 
voice fitted her to shine. 

Never but once did she lose command of her counte- 
nance upon the stage, and that was in these early days at 
the Museum. 

" It. was," she said, " in some farce where Mr. Warren 
was shut up in a pantry closet, while I, apparently uncon* 
scious of the fact, was playing the piano accompaniment 
to a song. He suddenly opened the door and looked out, 









ADELAIDE PHILLIPS. 55 

Lis face revealing that he had been solacing his imprison- 
ment by helping himself to some of the sweetmeats on 
the shelves, and he assumed such a look as only he could 
call up. It was all over with me and my song ; fortu- 
nately, the audience also were too much convulsed with 
laughter to notice my inability to proceed, until it was 
possible for the play to go on." 

Those who have seen Mr. Warren at his funniest will 
not wonder at Miss Phillips' loss of self-control. 

When she was sixteen or seventeen years of age, her 
parents and relatives, recognizing the unusual power and 
beauty of her voice — a rich contralto — decided that she 
would do wisely to leave the stage for a time and study 
for the Italian opera. Her teachers had the utmost faith 
in her success. 

Jenny Lind was then in Boston, and Adelaide Phillips 
was introduced, and sang to her. The next day she 
received a friendly letter in which Miss Lind recommended 
Emanuel Garcia, her own instructor, as the most suitable 
teacher for her young friend, and added much wise and 
kindly advice concerning the career to which she aspired. 
Enclosed in the letter was a check for a thousand dollars. 

In 1852, Adelaide Phillips went to London, and 
remained there nearly two years pursuing her studies, 
under Garcia. From London she went to Italy, accom- 
panied by her father and sister, that she might better 
acquire the Italian language, and receive the training of 
Signor Profondo in operatic acting. While in Italy she 
kept a journal—a brief, business-like record, encumbered 
with very few of the raptures, sentiments, and gay non- 
sense that fill the pages of most young girls' diaries. 
Here is an extract from the first entry : 

"Mr. Biandi came and asked me if I wanted an 
engagement; he had spoken of me to one of the agents 
who wanted a contralto. The agent came accordingly. 



56 ADELAIDE PHILLIPS. 

I sang to him ' Pensa alia Patria.' He seemed very 
much pleased with my voice. The place is Brescia, in 
Lombardy. They offer four hundred dollars a month for 
four months. The first part to appear in, Arsace. Papa 
will give an answer in a few days. Mr. Biandi brought 
me the opera of Semiramide and gave me some good 
ideas. I commenced studying Arsace." 

The offer thus mentioned was accepted, and she made 
her d6but at Brescia. It was customary that the last 
rehearsal of an opera should be in full dress, but in a fit 
of girlish obstinacy, she refused to put on the armor of 
Arsace until the evening of the performance. The direc- 
tors and musical critics, who were present in force, 
showed their displeasure ; she retaliated by singing 
through the part in demi-voice. Her manager was in 
despair, and it certainly was a foolish thing for her to do, 
although she by no means realized its importance. The 
next night the house was crowded, and when she entered 
as Arsace, in full armor, she was received in silence. No 
applause followed her recitative and andante, and it was 
not until, provoked by their coldness to the utmost exer- 
tion, she gave the caballetta with superb power and pas- 
sion, that the audience, unable to resist longer, broke into 
a tempest of cheering. Her success was complete and 
triumphant. 

Other engagements followed; then many disappoint- 
ments. Whenever she sang she pleased, but she could 
not always find an opportunity to sing, and sometimes 
when she did the managers could not or would not pay 
her. Cheers and tears from the enthusiastic Italian audi- 
ences continued to greet her wherever she went, and 
sonnets and flowers were showered upon the stage, but 
money was so difficult to obtain that in 1855 she left Italy 
to try her fortune again in America. Her operatic d£but 
in this country was made in Philadelphia, once more in 






ADELAIDE PHILLIPS. 57 

the part of Arsace, and was in every way successful. 
Her popularity soon became assured. During the next 
few years she visited all parts of this country, and 
appeared successfully in Paris and other European cities. 
In Poland she was much struck by the appearance of her 
audience, all the ladies being attired in black. They 
were in mourning for their country. In Cuba, where she 
learned to speak Spanish like a native, she was received 
with a favor which she reciprocated. 

" My greatest artistic success, my true appreciation," 
she used to say, " was in Havana." 

During one of her visits to Havana with an opera 
troupe, a young girl of the chorus with whom she had 
made acquaintance during the voyage, was attacked by 
the yellow fever. Without a moment's thought of her- 
self, Miss Phillips went to her and nursed her throughout 
the whole of her illness. Sl\e took the disease herself, 
nearly died of it, lost all her beautiful hair, and was never 
again the strong, healthy woman she had been. 

This was of course an exceptional act, but her kindness, 
her generosity, and sympathy made her peculiarly dear to 
her friends. Her devotion to the interests of her family 
was unfailing. She^ was never so happy as when she 
lived with her brothers and sisters in the lovely country 
home at Marshfield, which she helped to beautify with her 
hands and her money. There she loved to be, whenever 
her arduous profession allowed her to rest. There she 
watched the growth of fruit and flowers, spent half her 
days out of doors, and enjoyed the society of half a dozen 
favorite dogs. There, too, she gave occasional entertain- 
ments, when her beautiful voice, her powers of mimicry, 
aftd her rare talent as a story teller, were all called into 
play to charm her guests. Although her heart was in 
this quiet country place, and the constant activity and 
frequent journeys which her engagements necessitated 



58 ADELAIDE PHILLIPS. 

were often distasteful to her, she held her profession in 
honor, and loyally resented all imputations cast upon it. 

" The actual work behind the scenes," she used to say, 
" leaves no time for the sort of things people imagine ; we 
are too busy, often too anxious, to attend to anything but 
our parts. The heroes and the heroines of the opera are 
seldom the lovers they enact ; often quite the reverse." 

Nor did she undervalue the applause of the public. It 
was most welcome to her, and she labored with scrupulous 
fidelity to deserve it, taking infinite pains with little things 
as well as great, never for a moment inattentive or care- 
less. She learned from an officer in the army the best way 
to sheathe her sword, and for many other such details she 
sought out and consulted those who she thought would 
be able to instruct her.' 

The praise she most enjoyed, however, was that of her 
friends ; and the most precious tribute to her powers was 
not that of the critics. She always looked back with 
peculiar pride to one evening at an entertainment in a 
fashionable house in New York, when she sang " Kathleen 
Mavourneen " to a large company. While she was singing 
a young Irish serving maid entered the room with a tray 
in her hand, and was so overcome with emotion, that for- 
getting her duties and her deportment alike, she sank 
down in a chair and burst into tears. At another time, 
at a hotel in the mountains, where Miss Phillips had 
refused to sing in public, having gone there in search of 
rest, she was found seated in the kitchen surrounded 
by guides and servants, all crying heartily at her pathetic 
singing of " Auld Robin Gray." 

The same magnetic power that characterized her sing- 
ing was exerted by her voice in speaking, when she chose 
to coax or command. Its influence was once acknowl- 
edged by a naughty little girl, who, having successfully 
resisted her parents and relatives, came and seated herself 
meekly at Miss Phillips' feet, saying : 






ADELAIDE PHILLIPS. 59 

" You have made me good, though I did not mean you 
should.'' 

Miss Phillips worked excessively hard, and after her 
health began to give way she kept on too long. She went 
abroad with her sister in 1882, hoping that rest and change 
would restore her. It was too late ; she died at Carlsbad, 
October 3, 1882, not fifty years of age. She lies buried 
in the cemetery at Marshfield in Massachusetts, near the 
gra\e of Daniel Webster. She was a conscientious artist 
and high-principled, too generous woman. There is per- 
haps no vocation so arduous as hers, for a public singer, 
besides serving an exacting, fastidious, inconsiderate, and 
capricious master, the public, is also a slave to her voice. 
She rests in peace after a life of arduous toil, and her 
memory is dear to many who knew her worth.* 

* Adelaide Phillips, a Record. By Mrs. K. C. Waterstoa. Boston, 
1883. 



TWO QUEENS. THE DAUGHTERS OF JAMES II OF 
ENGLAND. 

IT is interesting to turn over a chestful of old family 
letters stored away in a garret which has been closed, 
perhaps, for a century. There is a lady living in Holland 
called the Countess of Bentinct, who has long possessed 
a rare treasure of this kind, a box of old letters written 
by James II of England and his two daughters, Mary 
and Anne, both of whom reigned after their father lost 
his crown by turning Catholic. Recently, the Countess 
of Bentinct has published these letters in Holland, and 
now all the world can read what these royal personages 
thought in the crisis of their fate, in the very years (1687 
and 1688) when James was estranging all his Protestant 
subjects, and when his daughters, Mary of Orange and 
the Princess Anne, were looking on and watching the events 
which were to call them to the throne of Great Britain. 

The Princess Mary, a beautiful woman twenty-six years 
of age, was then living in Holland in the palace of her 
husband, William, Prince of Orange, whom she devot- 
edly loved. The Princess Anne, married to a son of the 
King of Denmark, lived in England. Both sisters, if we 
may judge by their letters, were warmly attached to the 
Church of England. Nevertheless, upon reading Mary's 
* letters, some uncharitable persons might use the language 
of Shakespeare and say, "The lady doth protest too 
much." As to the King, her father, he gave proof of his 
sincerity by sacrificing his throne to his convictions. 
The first letter of importance in this collection is one 

60 



THE DAUGHTERS OF JAMES II OF ENGLAND. 6 1 

written by James II to his eldest daughter Mary, giving 
her, in compliance with her request, the reasons why he 
had changed his religion. This letter was written Novem- 
ber 4, 1687, about a year before William of Orange invaded 
England and seized the crown. 

" I must tell you first," wrote the King, " that I was 
brought up very strictly in the English Church by Dr. 
Stuart, to whom the King, my father, gave particular 
instructions to that end, and I was so zealous that when 
the Queen, my mother, tried to rear my brother, the 
Duke of Gloucester, in the Catholic religion, I did my 
utmost (preserving always the respect due her) to keep 
him firm in his first principles, and as young people often 
do, I thought it was a point of honor to be firmly attached 
to the sentiments in which I was reared." 

He proceeds to tell her that, after the dethronement 
of his father, Charles I, and all the time he lived an exile 
in foreign countries, no Catholic ever attempted to con- 
vert him ; and he assures her that his change of faith 
began within himself. The first thing that attracted his 
attention, he tells his daughter, was the great devotion 
that he remarked among Catholics of all ranks and con- 
ditions, and the frequent reformation of Catholic young 
men who had previously been dissolute. 

" I observed also," he says, " the becoming manner of 
their public worship, their churches so well adorned, and 
the great charities which they maintained ; all of which 
made me begin to have a better opinion of their religion, 
and compelled me to enquire into it more carefully." 

Having reached this point, he began to study the doc- 
trines in dispute, as they were presented in well-known 
books, and particularly in the New Testament, which, he 
says, plainly reveals "an infallible Church," against 
which the gates of hell shall not prevail. This was 
his main position, which he fortified by quoting the usual 



62 THE DAUGHTERS OF JAMES II OF ENGLAND. 

texts. He writes on this subject at great length to his 
daughter, and it is impossible to doubt that he gave utter- 
ance to what he really believed and warmly felt. All 
these letters, I should explain, are written in the French 
language, which had probably been the language of the 
family since the time of their ancestor, Mary, Queen of 
Scots, great-grandmother to James II. Princess Mary 
kept even her private diary in French, wrote to her sister 
Anne in French, and probably knew the French language 
much better than she did the English. In the public 
library at the Hague there is a splendid English Bible, 
which was handed to her when she was crowned Queen 
in Westminster Abbey, on the title-page of which are 
these words, in her own hand : 

" This book was given the king and I at our coronation. 
Marie R." 

Her French is better than this, and even the spelling 
is no worse than was common among educated French 
ladies of that period. She answered the King's letter at 
inordinate length, and employed all the forms of respect 
then used towards monarchs, beginning her letter with 
"Sire," and always addressing her father as"V. M.," 
which signifies Votre Majeste. She showed a good deal 
of skill and tact in meeting his arguments, and it is 
possible that she had the aid of some learned doctor of 
divinity. Upon the question of the infallibility of the 
Roman Church, she says : 

"I have never understood that it has been decided, 
even by Catholics themselves, whether this infallibility 
rests in the Pope alone, or in a General Council, or in 
both together ; and I hope Your Majesty will be willing 
to permit me to ask where it was when there were three 
popes at once, each of whom had his Council called General, 
and when all the popes thundered anathemas against one 
another ? " 






THE DAUGHTERS OP JAMES II OF ENGLAND. 63 

She argued this point at considerable length, because, 
as she remarked, " if the infallibility be conceded, every 
other claim follows as a matter of course." The King 
ordered his ambassador to Holland to supply the Princess 
with the best Catholic books, in which the points of differ- 
ence were treated by theologians. This command was 
obeyed, and the Princess dutifully read some of them, and 
wrote her opinion of them to her father. She would 
have made a very good reviewer, so apt was she to seize 
the weak places of a book. One of the Catholic authors 
remarked that people could never be convinced by insults 
and violence. 

" I must believe, then," said she, " that the first edition 
of his book was published before the King of France 
(Louis XIV) began to convert people by his dragoons, 
since toward the end of his work he gives high praise to 
that king." 

The same author objected to the circulation of the 
Bible on the ground that " women and ignorant people " 
<30uld not understand it. Without stopping to remark 
upon the contemptuous allusion to the intellect of her sex, 
she observes, in reply, that " our souls are as precious in 
the eyes of God as the wisest, for before Him there is 
no respect of persons." And, besides, as she continues : 

" God requires of each person according to what he has, 
tind not according to what he has not ; through His mercy 
ITe has left us a written Word which is clear and exact." 

She also quoted the texts relied on by Protestants, such 
us, " Search the Scriptures," and others ; showing a sur- 
prising familiarity with the controversies of the time, 
which indeed were to her and her sister of the most 
vital interest. More than a crown was at stake. If their 
father held on his course, Mary might at any moment 
be called upon to fill a vacant throne, or be the nominal 
head of a rebellion against her own father. Anne, mean- 



64 THE DAUGHTERS OF JAMES II OF ENGLAND. 

while, was full of anxiety and apprehension. It was her 
cruel fate to become the mother of seventeen children* 
all of whom died in childhood ; so that for many years 
she lived in almost continual anxiety, each child bringing 
new hopes, which were soon changed to apprehension and 
despair. At this very time she wrote to her sister from 
her palace in London, called the Cockpit : 

" I cannot say half of what I wish because I am obliged 
to return immediately to my poor child, for I am more 
anxious when I am absent from her." 

It was nearly twenty years before she ceased to hope. 
All her children perished in infancy except one, who 
lived to be eleven years old ; so that the sentence just 
quoted represents a great part of the history of her 
married life. In October, 1688, William, Prince of 
Orange, with a fleet of six hundred vessels, sailed for 
England, leaving his wife in Holland to pray for his suc- 
cess. She relates in her diary the manner of their part- 
ing, which was certainly peculiar. 

" In case," said the Prince, " it pleases God that I 
never more see you, it will be necessary for you to marry 
again." 

These words, she says, surprised her and rent her 
heart. 

" There is no need," continued the Prince, " for me to 
tell you not to marry a Papist." 

On uttering these words he burst into tears, and as 
Boon as he could command his voice he assured her that 
it was only his anxiety for the reformed religion which 
made him speak as he had done. She did not know what 
to reply. But at last she said : 

" I have never loved any one but you, and should not 
know how to love another. Besides, as I have been 
married so many years without having the blessing of a 
child, I believe that that is sufficient to exempt me from 
ever thinking of what you propose." 






THE DAUGHTERS OF JAMES II OP ENGLAND- 65 

She accompanied the Prince to his ship and sw the 
fleet set sail. A month passed before she heard news of 
him, during which she spent most of her time in public 
and private prayers, as did also all her court, and a great 
number of the people of Holland. 

" Every morning," she records, " I attended the French 
prayers which were held in my own house. At noon, I 
joined in the English prayers ; and at five in the after- 
noon, I attended church to hear a sermon ; at half-past 
seven in the evening, I was present at evening prayers. 
All this I did constantly, God by His grace giving me 
health to be able to do it. Every Friday we had a par- 
ticular solemnity in my house, where I then had an Eng- 
lish sermon preached. But my enemy, the devil, found 
means to stir up within me scruples and fears, causing 
me to apprehend that by all these public devotions I was 
attracting the praises of men, and that that would excite 
my vanity. I feared also that if I should abstain from 
them and remain at home, I should not give them that 
good example and encouragement to devotion which was 
my duty in the rank in which it had pleased God to place 
me. Hence, whether I went to prayers or abstained, 
I saw something to fear. Nevertheless, thanks be to 
God, I resolved to do my duty without troubling myself 
as to the consequences." 

During that month of suspense, the Princess received 
no company. When at length she was assured that her 
husband had made a safe landing, she resumed her recep- 
tions, four days in the week, at which, however, as she 
herself records, "I did not play at cards." A young 
lady has seldom been so cruelly situated as she was then : 
her husband having invaded the dominions of her father 
with the deliberate intention to drive him from his throne 
and country. It is evident from these letters that she 
had no scruples of conscience in the matter, but gave all 



66 THE DAUGHTERS OF JAMES II OF ENGLAND. 

her heart and approval to her husband. She opposed her 
father, not merely because he was a Catholic, but wished 
to make England Catholic. She believed that he was 
trying to pass off upon the people of England a spurious 
child, who would continue the work which he had begun, 
and fasten upon Great Britain a line of Catholic kings. 

Success rewarded the efforts of the Prince of Orange, 
and in a few weeks Mary joined him in England. In 
April, 1689, "William and Mary were crowned at West- 
minster Abbey, King and Queen of England. As she was 
not merely Queen by right of marriage, but by right of 
birth, she was crowned in all respects as a monarch, being- 
girt with a sword, placed upon the throne, and presented 
with a Bible, a pair of spurs, and a small globe. 

The gracious manners of Queen Mary, her pronounced 
piety, and her noble presence went far towards reconcil- 
ing the people to the ungenial demeanor of her husband. 
It was she who introduced into England the taste for 
collecting china, which has been often since revived, and 
which prevails even at this day. She continued to write 
letters to her old friends in Holland, and to make entries 
into her diary, some of which are printed in the volume 
under consideration. Her husband did not find Ireland 
so easy to conquer as England, and it was not till the 
summer of 1691 that the Catholic Irish were finally sub- 
dued. When the news of victory reached England, the 
churches opened, and the people thronged to them to offer 
thanks to God. Queen Mary, at the Palace of Kensing- 
ton, wrote thus in her diary : 

" What thanks ought I to render, my soul, to thy 
Lord for all His bounties? They are indeed new every- 
morning, and I can well say : it is of thy mercy, Lord, 
that we are not consumed, for Thy mercy endureth for- 
ever. But what are we, thy poor sinful people of this 
country, what is my husband, and what am I, that we 



THE DAUGHTERS OF JAMES II 0? ENGLAND. 67 

should receive so many favors ? my God, to thee be all 
the glory ! May we learn to humble ourselves truly 
before Him, and may all those poor people in Ireland, as 
well as ourselves here, being delivered from our enemies, 
serve Thee in holiness and justice all the days of our 
lives ! " 

Queen Mary did not long enjoy her royal state. At 
the early age of thirty-two, in the very bloom and lustre 
of her maturity, she was seized with small-pox, and died 
in a few days. The King, her husband, was led, almost 
insensible, from the chamber of death, and when he 
died, eight years after, a gold ring, containing a lock of 
Mary's hair, was found next to iiis person suspended by 
a black silk ribbon. The childless Anne then succeeded 
to the throne. So much for this box of royal letters! 
now opened for the first time in this country. 



AN EVENING WITH RACHEL. 

IT was the evening of May 29, 1839, when this suppe* 
occurred, of which the reader, after the lapse of 
thirty-eight years, is invited to partake. Mademoiselle 
Rachel had performed in Yoltaire's tragedy of " Tancr&de" 
to a crowded and enraptured audience, for she was then 
in the flush of her first celebrity, only eleven months 
having elapsed since her first appearance in classic 
tragedy. 

The real name of this " sublime child," as the French 
poets love to style her, was Elizabeth Rachel Felix, and 
she was born in Switzerland, the daughter of a Jewish 
peddler. In her early days she used to sing in the caf6s 
of Paris, accompanying herself on an old guitar. She 
was about eleven years of age when her voice caught the 
ear of one of the founders of the Royal Conservatory of 
Music, who placed her in one of its classes, and agreed 
to defray the expenses of her education. Her voice not 
proving to be as promising as her benefactor imagined, he 
procured an admission for her into a declamation class, 
where her wonderful talent was trained and developed. 

She made her first appearance- at the Theatre Frangais, 
in September, 1838, and she was speedily accepted as the 
first actress of the age. The fortunes of the theater, 
which had been at the lowest ebb, were restored, and her 
father demanded for her, and in time obtained, a revenue 
of eighty thousand francs per annum. 

It was a night, as I have just said, of Voltaire's 
68 



AN EVENING WITH RACHEL. 69 

" TancrSde," in which she played the part of the heroine, 
Amenaide, the beloved of Tancrede, a part in which she 
produced thrilling effects. In the audience, on that occa- 
sion, sat Alfred de Musset, one of the most admired of 
recent French poets, who had been for some time a friend 
of the new actress and of her family, as well as one of 
the warmest appreciators of her genius. At the end of 
an act he went behind the scenes to compliment her upon 
the beauty and fitness of her costume. Toward the close 
of the play she was to read a letter from her lover, 
mortally wounded upon the field of battle, who was dying 
under the impression that she had betrayed him. The 
letter runs thus : 

" I could not survive your perfidy. I die on the battle- 
field, but I die of wounds inflicted by you. I wished, 
cruel woman, in exposing myself for you, to save at once 
your glory and your life." 

Never before had she read this letter with such tender 
pathos ; and she said afterwards that she had been moved 
to such a degree herself, that she could scarcely go on 
with the part. At ten o'clock the play ended, for a 
French tragedy only lasts about an hour and a half. De 
Musset on leaving the theater met her by chance in the 
street, going home with one of her friends, and followed 
by a crowd of her special admirers, members of the press, 
artists, and others. The poet saluted her, and she 
responded by saying : 

" Come home to supper with us." 

So he joined the throng, and they were soon all seated 

in her parlor — Rachel, her sister Sarah, their mother, 

Alfred de Musset, and several others. The events of the 

evening were afterwards recorded by the poet, as he says, 

"with the exactness of shorthand," and the narrative 

has been published since his death in a volume of his 

last writings and familiar letters. After some trifling 
5 



7° AN EVENING WITH RACHEL. 

conversation, Rachel discovered that she had left her 
rings and bracelets at the theater, and she sent her ser- 
vant back for them. But she had only one servant, and, 
behold ! there was no one to get the supper ready. 
Rachel, nothing abashed, took off some of her finery, put 
on a dressing sacque and night cap, and went into the 
kitchen. Fifteen minutes passed. She reappeared, " as 
pretty as an angel," carrying a dish in which were three 
beefsteaks cooked by herself. She placed the dish in the 
middle of the table, and gaily said : 

" Regale ! " 

She then went back to the kitchen and returned with 
a tureen of smoking soup in one hand, and in the other 
a saucepan full of spinach. That was the supper. No 
plates, no spoons; for the servant had carried away the 
keys of the cupboard. Rachel opened the sideboard, 
found a salad dish full of salad, discovered one plate, took 
some salad with the wooden salad spoon, sat down and 
began to eat. 

" But," cried her mother, who was very hungry, " there 
are some brass platters in the kitchen." 

Rachel dutifully brought them and distributed them 
among the guests ; and while they were eating, as best 
they could, the following conversation took place : 

Mother — My dear, your steaks are overdone. 

Rachel — It is true ; they are as hard as wood. When 
I did our housekeeping I was a better cook. It is one 
talent the less. No matter ; I have lost on one side, but 
I have gained on the other. You don't eat, Sarah. 

Sarah — No, I cannot eat from brass plates. 

Rachel — Oh ! It is since I bought a dozen silver plates 
with my savings that you can no longer endure brass ! 
If I become richer, you will want one servant behind your 
chair and another before it. Never will I turn those old 
platters out of our house. They have served us too long 
for that. Haven't they, mother ? 



AN EVENING WITH RACHEL. 7 1 

Mother (her mouth full) — What do you say, child ? 

Rachel (to the poet) — Just think ; when I played at 
the Theater Moli&re, I had only two pairs of stockings, 
and every morning — 

Here Sarah began to gabble German, in order to pre- 
vent her sister from going on with her story. 

Rachel — No German here ! There is nothing to be 
ashamed of ! I had, I say, only two pairs of stockings, 
and I was obliged to wash one pair every morning to 
wear on the stage. That pair was hanging in my room 
upon a clothes horse, while I wore the other pair. 

The Poet — And you did the housekeeping ? 

Rachel — I was up at six every morning, and by eight 
all the beds were made. Then I went to market to buy 
our dinner. 

The Poet — And did you keep a little change out of the 
market money ? 

Rachel — No. I was a very honest cook. Was I not, 
mother ? 

Mother (still stuffing) — 0, yes ; that you were indeed. 

Rachel — Once only I was a thief for a month. When 
I bought four sous' worth, I called it five, and when I 
paid ten sous I put it down twelve. At the end of the 
month I found myself mistress of three francs. 

The Poet (in a severe tone) — Mademoiselle, what did 
you do with those three francs ? 

Rachel was silent. 

Mother — She bought the works of Moliere with them. 

The Poet— Did you, really ? 

Rachel — Yes, indeed. I had already a Corneille and a 
Racine ; I had to have a Moli&re. I bought it with my 
three francs, and then I confessed my crimes. 

At this point of the conversation some of the company 
rose to go, and soon all the guests departed, except De 
Musset, and two or three intimate friends. The servant 



72 AN EVENING WITH RACHEL. 

returned from the theater and placed upon the table some 
brilliant rings, two magnificent bracelets and a golden 
coronet, many thousand francs' worth of jewelry, all glit- 
tering in the midst of the brass plates and the remains of 
the supper. The poet, meanwhile, startled at the idea of 
her keeping house, working in the kitchen, making beds, 
and undergoing the fatigues incident to poverty, looked 
at her hands, fearing to find them ugly or spoiled. He 
observed, on the contrary, that they were small, white, 
and plump, with the slenderest fingers. She had the 
hands of a princess. 

Her sister Sarah, who did not eat, continued to scold 
in German. That morning, indeed, she had been guilty 
of some escapade a little too far from the maternal wing, 
and she had obtained her pardon and her place at the 
table only in consequence of her sister's entreaties. 

Rachel (replying to the Grerman growls*) — You plague 
me ! For my part, I like to recall my youth. I remem- 
ber that one day I wanted to make some punch in one of 
these very brass plates. I held my plate over a candle, 
and it melted in my hand. Speaking of that, Sophie, 
bring me some cherry brandy. Let us have some punch. 
There ! I have had enough. I have done my supper. 

The maid returned, bringing a bottle. 

Mother — -Sophie has made a mistake. That is a bottle 
of absinthe. 

The Poet — Give me a little of it. 

Rachel — 0, how glad I should be to have you take some- 
thing in our house. 

Mother— They say that absinthe is very wholesome. 

The Poet — Not at all. It is pernicious and detestable. 

Sarah — Then why do you ask for some ? 

The Poet — In order to have it to say that I took some- 
thing here. 

Rachel — I wish to drink a little of it. 



AN EVENING WITH RACHEL. 73 

So saying, she poured some absinthe into a glass of 
water and drank it. They brought her a silver bowl, into 
which she put sugar and cherry brandy, after which she 
set fire to her punch, and made it blaze. 

Rachel — I love that blue flame. 

The Poet — It is much prettier when there is no light in 
the room. 

Rachel — Sophie, take away the candles. 

Mother — Not at all ; not at all ! What an idea ! 

Rachel (aside) — This is unsupportable ! Pardon, dear 
mother ; you are good, you are charming (kissing her) ; 
but I want Sophie to carry away the candles. 

Upon this, the poet himself took the two candles and 
put them under the table, which produced the effect of 
twilight. The mother, by turns green and blue from the 
glimmer of the blazing punch, leveled her eyes upon De 
Musset, and watched all his movements. He put the 
candles back upon the table. 

A Flatterer — Mademoiselle Rabat was not beautiful 
this evening. 

The Poet — You are hard to please. I thought her 
pretty enough. 

Another Flatterer — She has no intelligence. 

Rachel— Why do you say that ? She is not so stupid 
as many others ; and, besides, she is a good girl. Let 
her alone. I do not like to have my comrades spoken of 
in that way. 

The punch was ready. Rachel filled the glasses and 
handed them about to the company. She poured the rest 
of the punch into a soup plate, and began to drink it with 
a spoon. Then she took the poet's cane, drew the sword 
from it, and picked her teeth with the point. 

Here ended, for that evening, all common talk and 
child's play. A single word sufficed to change the char- 
acter of the scene, and to convert this unformed child 
into an artist. 



74 AN EVENING WITH RACHEI 

The Poet — How you read that letter, this evening ! 
You were really moved. 

Rachel — Yes ; it seemed to me as if something within 
me was going to give way. But it is no matter ; I do 
not like that piece much. It is false. 

The Poet — Do you prefer the plays of Corneille and 
Racine ? 

Rachel — I like Corneille very much ; and yet, he is 
sometimes trivial, sometimes bombastic. He comes short 
of the truth. 

The Poet — ! gently, mademoiselle ! 

Rachel — Let us see. When in Horace, for example, 
Sabine says : " One can change a lover, but not a hus- 
band ; " well, I don't like it. It is gross. 

The Poet — You will confess, at least, that it is true. 

Rachel — Yes ; but is it worthy of Corneille ? Talk to 
me of Racine ! There is a man I adore ! All that he 
says is so beautiful, so true, so noble. 

The Poet — Speaking of Racine, do you remember 
receiving some time ago an anonymous letter which gave 
you advice respecting the last scene in " Mithridate " ? 

Rachel — Perfectly ; I followed the advice given me, and 
ever since I have always been applauded in that scene. 
Do you know the person that wrote to me ? 

The Poet — Very well ; she is the woman in all Paris 
who has the greatest mind and the smallest foot. What 
part are you studying now ? 

Rachel — We are going to play this summer, " Marie 
Stuart," and afterwards, " Polyeucte," and, perhaps — 

The Poet— Well ? 

Rachel (striking the table) — Well, I wish to play 
Phedre ! They tell me I am too young, that I am too 
thin, and a hundred other follies. I simply reply : It is 
the most beautiful role of Racine ; I aspire to play it. 

Sarah — My dear, perhaps you are wrong. 



AN EVENING WITH RACHEL. 75 

Rachel — Never mind ! If people think that I am too 
young, and that the part is not suitable to me, what then, 
parbleu ! There were many who thought the same when 
I played Roxane; and what harm did it do me ? If they 
say I am too thin, I maintain that it is a betise. A woman 
who has an infamous passion, but dies rather than yield 
to it ; a woman who has been dried up in the fires of 
affliction, such a woman cannot have a chest like Madam 
Paradol. It would be a contradiction in nature. I have 
read the part ten times in the last eight days. How I 
shall play it I do not know ; but I tell you that I feel it. 
In vain the newspapers object ; they will not disgust me 
with the part. The newspapers, instead of helping me 
and encouraging me, exhaust their ingenuity in injuring 
me. But I will play that part if only four persons come 
to see me! Yes (turning to De Musset), I have read 
certain articles full of candor and of conscience, and 1 
know nothing better or more useful ; but there are people 
who use their weapons only to lie, to destroy ! They are 
worse than thieves or assassins. They kill the soul with 
pin pricks ! 0, it seems to me that I could poison them. 

Mother — My dear, you do nothing but talk ; you tire 
yourself out. This morning you were up at six o'clock ; 
I do not know what your legs are made of. After talking 
all day you played this evening. You will make yourself 
sick. 

Rachel (eagerly*) — No ; let me alone ! I tell you, no ! 
It is that which keeps me alive. Would you like me 
(turning to De Musset) to go and get the book ? We 
will read the piece together. 

The Poet — Would I like it ! You could propose noth- 
ing more agreeable to me. 

Sarah — But, my dear, it is half-past eleven. 

Rachel — Very well; who hinders you from going to 
bed? 



j6 AN EVENING WITH RACHEL. 

Sarah went to bed. Rachel rose and left the room, 
returning in a moment carrying the volume of Racine in 
her hands, with something in her air and step which 
seemed to the poet to savor of the solemn and religious. 
It was the manner of a celebrant approaching the altar 
bearing the sacred vessels. She took a seat next De Mus- 
set, and snuffed the candles. Her mother fell into a doze. 

Rachel (opening the book in a manner expressive of pro- 
found respect, and bending over it)— -How I love this man ! 
When I put my nose into this book, I could remain two 
days without eating or drinking. 

The poet and the actress then began to read that 
" PhMre " which French critics, from Voltaire to Sainte 
Beuve, unite in thinking the supreme product of the 
French drama. The book lay open between them. The 
rest of the company, one after the other, took their leave, 
Rachel nodding a slight farewell as each withdrew, and 
continuing to read. At first she repeated the lines in a 
monotonous tone, as though she was saying a litany. 
Gradually she kindled. They exchanged remarks and 
ideas upon each passage. She came at last to the dec- 
laration. She extended one arm straight upon the table, 
and with her forehead leaning upon her left hand she 
abandoned herself entirely to the reading. Nevertheless, 
she still spoke only in half voice. Suddenly her eyes 
sparkled. The genius of Racine lighted up her counte- 
nance. She grew pale and red by turns. Never had her 
companion seen anything so beautiful, so moving ; at the 
theater she had never produced such an effect upon him. 
All the circumstances concurred to deepen the impres- 
sion ; her fatigue, a slight hoarseness, the evident stimu- 
lus of the punch, the lateness of the hour, the almost 
feverish animation of that little face with the pretty 
night cap over it, the brilliancy of her eyes, a certain 
infantile smile which occasionally flitted across her counte* 






AN EVENING WITH RACHEL. JJ 

nance — even the disordered table, the unsnuffed candle, 
the dozing mother — all made up a picture worthy of 
Rembrandt, a chapter that might figure in Wilhelm 
Meister, and a reminiscence of artist life never to be 
effaced. 

Half-past twelve arrived. The father of the family 
came in from the opera. As soon as he was seated he 
ordered his daughter, in tones which seemed brutal to 
the poet, to stop her reading. Rachel closed the book, 
and said in a low tone, " This is revolting ; I will buy a 
book-holder and read in bed." De Musset looked at her 
and saw large tears rolling from her eyes. It was to him, 
indeed, most revolting to hear this wonderful creature 
addressed in such a manner ; and he took his leave full of 
admiration, respect, and emotion. 

Brutal as may have been the father's manner, we are 
obliged to confess that he was substantially right ; and if 
this gifted girl had taken his advice, only so far as to go 
to bed when her work was done, she would not have died 
at the age of thirty-seven, when, in the course of nature, 
she would not have reached the full development of her 
powers. Alfred De Musset began soon after to write a 
play for her which he did not live to complete ; for he, 
too, was one of the brilliant people who burn the candle 
of life at both ends, and live in disregard of those phys- 
ical conditions of welfare which no man or woman can 
violate with impunity. 

In Paris, that night, there were a thousand suppers 
more sumptuous and splendid. The chance presence of 
a sympathetic reporter, by preserving a record of this 
one, reveals to us the sublime child herself and the atmos- 
phere in which she lived. Strange that our cherished 
apparatus of education should give us mediocrity, while 
genius is generated under the rudest conditions, and 
develops itself, not merely without help, but in spite of 
the harshest hindrance ! 



JOSEPHINE AND BONAPARTE. 

WE get much light upon Josephine, and upon Napo- 
leon's general brutality towards women from 
the Memoirs of Madame de Remusat, which the people 
of Paris have been reading lately with so much inter- 
est. This lady was a member of the household of the 
Empress Josephine for several years, and she gives 
us an inside view of Napoleon's court which is highly 
edifying. A particularly interesting chapter is that in 
which the coronation of Bonaparte and Josephine is 
related ; a scene which Thiers has described with extra- 
ordinary splendoi and graphic power. Thiers gives us 
the outside of the wondrous show ; Madame de Remusat 
the inside. 

It was November, 1804. The new emperor and empress 
were at the palace of Saint-Cloud, with the ladies and 
gentlemen of their " households,'' a great company oi 
noted persons, all looking forward with intensest interest 
to the coming spectacle. The brothers and sisters of 
Napoleon were there with their families and retinue. A 
great preliminary question agitated the circle, respecting 
the position of Josephine in the ceremony of the corona- 
tion. Should she be a spectator or a participant ? Al] 
in a word : Was she about to be crowned or divorced 't 
Bonaparte himself passionately desired an heir to his new 
throne, which Josephine could never give him. In his 
address to the Senate, formally accepting the throne, he 
used such language as this : 
78 






JOSEPHINE, WIFE OF NAPOLEON I. 79 

"My descendants will long preserve this throne. In 
the field, they will be the first soldiers of the army, 
sacrificing their lives for the defence of their country. 
As magistrates, they will never lose sight of the truth 
that contempt for the laws and of the social order are 
> only the results of the weakness and indecision of princes." 

To the people of France the full significance of these 
words was not apparent ; but Josephine and all the family 
of Bonaparte knew very well what they meant. His 
brothers and sisters, who had nothing of Napoleon but his 
littleness, urged him with excessive importunity to seize 
this occasion to set Josephine aside. If they had been 
less persistent, they might have succeeded, for the 
emperor was strongly tempted to begin his reign with 
this act of baseness. Josephine herself was torn with 
anxiety, for she loved the pomps and splendors of a 
court, and was really attached to her husband. In the 
crisis of these family intrigues an incident occurred which 
came near deciding the question against Josephine. 

Imagine a large drawing-room at Saint-Cloud, with 
windows looking out upon the beautiful gardens of that 
royal chateau, and commanding a view of the opposite 
wing in which were the emperor's own rooms. Imagine 
this drawing-room filled with the ladies belonging to the 
household of the empress, occupied in various idle employ- 
ments. One of the ladies suddenly leaves the apartment, 
and Josephine, who had been for some weeks very jealous 
of her, looks out of the window, and sees her enter the 
emperor's cabinet. She took Madame de R£musat aside, 
and said to her in fierce whispers : 

" I am going this very hour to know the truth of the 
matter. Remain in this saloon with ail my circle, and if 
any one asks what has become of me, you will say that 
the emperor has sent for me." 

The lady strove to retain her, but she was beside her- 



8o 

self with passion, and would not listen to her. Josephine 
left the room, and was gone for half an hour. Then 
returning, she ordered Madame de R£musat to follow her 
into her chamber. 

" All is lost ! " cried the empress, as soon as they were 
alone ; " and what I suspected is only too true. I sought 
the emperor in his cabinet. He was not there ! Then I 
went by the secret staircase to the little suite of rooms 
above. I found the door shut, but through the keyhole I 
heard their voices. I knocked very loud, saying who I 
was. When the door was opened I burst into reproaches, 
and she began to cry. Bonaparte flew into a passion so 
violent that I scarcely had time to escape from his resent- 
ment. In truth, I am still trembling ; for I do not know 
to what excess he would have carried his fury. No doubt 
he will come here, and I expect a terrible scene." 

" Do not commit a second fault," said Madame de 
R^musat ; " for the emperor would never forgive your 
making a confidante of any one whatever in this matter. 
Let me leave you, madame. He must find you alone, 
and do try to soften him, and repair so great an 
imprudence." 

There was indeed a terrible scene between the most 
arbitrary of men and his jealous wife. As soon as he was 
gone, Josephine called Madame de R6musat to her and 
told her that Bonaparte in his anger had broken some of 
the furniture, and given her notice to prepare to leave 
Saint-Cloud, as he was tired of being watched by a jeal- 
ous woman. He was resolved, he said, to shake off such 
a yoke, and then do what his policy required — marry a 
woman who could give him children. Upon leaving her, 
he sent to Paris for her son Eugene to come and take 
eharge of his mother's departure from the palace. 

" I am lost beyond resource," said Josephine. 

Eugene arrived. He behaved nobly, refusing all 



JOSEPHINE, WIPE OF NAPOLEON L 81 

recompense and benefits of every kind, and declaring that 
he would devote himself to his mother, even if he had to 
go back with her to Martinique, her native island. Bona- 
parte appeared struck with this generous devotion, and 
listened to the young man in " ferocious silence." A few 
days passed. Josephine acted upon the advice of her 
lady, and played the part of the contrite and submissive 
wife. Napoleon, who had really loved her after his fash- 
ion, was soon mollified, and he then endeavored to per- 
suade her to spare him the pain of sending her away by- 
going away herself. 

" I have not the courage," said he to her, " to take the 
last resolution, and if you exhibit too much sorrow, and 
if you only obey me, I feel that I shall never be firm 
enough to compel you to leave me ; but, I confess, I 
greatly desire that you should resign yourself to the 
interest of my policy, and that you yourself should 
relieve me of the embarrassment of this painful separa- 
tion." 

To all sucn words as these, Josephine only replied by 
the penetrating eloquence of tears. These might not 
have succeeded if the other Bonapartes had not urged 
the divorce with the vehemence of personal jealously and 
dislike. They thought they had succeeded, and boasted 
of their triumph a little too openly and confidently. 
Napoleon perceived this, and suddenly determined to 
disappoint them. He told her one evening that the Pope 
was about to arrive, who would crown them both in the 
cathedral of N6tre Dame. 

The preparations now went forward with great rapidity. 
There were private rehearsals of the coronation, attended 
by the artist David, who directed the positions of each 
performer, and arranged all the details of the scene. It 
was on one of these occasions that Napoleon announced 
his intention of putting the crown upon his own head ; 
for, said he : 



82 JOSEPHINE, WIFE OF NAPOLEON I. 

" I found the crown of Prance on the ground, and I 
picked it up." 

On the great day, the sisters of Napoleon were forced 
to carry the train of the empress ; a duty which they per- 
formed with so much repugnance, and so badly, that she 
could scarcely walk, until the emperor growled a sharp 
reproof through his clenched teeth. 

The most startling anecdote which these Memoirs 
have so far given, is one showing that Napoleon was will- 
ing at one time to palm off on the French people a false 
heir to the throne. Attempts of this kind have been the 
subject of more than one popular novel; but here it 
figures as a fact. Josephine, to save her crown, gave 
her consent to the fraud, and Bonaparte sent for his chief 
physician, Corvisart, to arrange with him the details. 
Dr. Corvisart proved to be a man of courage and honor. 
He refused to lend himself to the deception, and the nota- 
ble project was of necessity given up. It was- not until 
after the marriage of Bonaparte with Marie Louise and 
the birth of her son, that Dr. Corvisart confided this 
secret to Madame de R&nusat. 

Such is personal government. Such are courts. Such 
are the consequences of resting the honor and safety of a 
nation upon one man. 






LADY MORGAN. 

IN naming one of her early novels " The Wild Irish 
Girl," Lady Morgan gave the public an inkling of her 
own character. The world Wild, however, has acquired 
opprobrious meanings, none of which apply to her inno- 
cent and high-bred vivacity. She was a true specimen of 
the Irish race, gay, witty, liberal, but ever loyal to friends 
and duty. No contrast could be greater than her exuber- 
ant gayety with the constrained existence and despotic 
formalism to which we are accustomed; and hence the 
interest she excites in us. Here is her strange, eventful 
history, a history possible only to a child of Erin. 

On Christmas eve, 1783, a party was gathered in Dub- 
lin at the house of a popular Irish actor, by name Robert 
Owenson. His wife was not present, having excused her- 
self on the plea of indisposition ; but the feast progressed 
merrily, with singing, toasts, and story-telling, and it was 
already Christmas morning when a breathless messenger 
appeared on the threshold to inform the host of the 
arrival of an unexpected Christmas present from his 
wife. He hastily quitted the room on receiving the 
announcement, and an hour later returned beaming to 
his guests (who had not thought of dispersing in the 
meantime) bringing word that all was going well, and he 
was the proud father of " a dear little Irish girl," the 
blessing he had long wished for. This intelligence was 
greeted with a half-suppressed cheer by the company, who 

83 



84 LADY MORGAN. 

arranged before they left to meet again a month later and 
celebrate the christening, one of them, Edward Lysaght, 
a noted lawyer and wit of that day, agreeing to stand 
sponsor. 

The party then broke up, and made the best haste they 
could to their several homes, for the night was cold and the 
snow was falling. Lysaght, who had the farthest to go, 
trudged steadily onward, his mind yet filled with thoughts 
of the feast just over and of the little baby who was to be 
his goddaughter, while the notes of a Christmas carol, 
sung by a child whose form he could dimly perceive some 
distance in advance, floated back to his ears and fell in 
pleasantly with his thoughts. Overtaking the child, he 
was enabled to catch the last woi'ds of her song. They 
were the well-known refrain : 

i i Christmas comes but once a year, 
And when it comes it brings good cheer." 

As the song died away the singer sank down suddenly 
upon the steps of a brilliantly lighted house resounding 
with music and laughter. He went up to her and found 
that she was dead, still grasping her ballad in her hand. 

This pathetic story of her birthnight was almost the 
first story told to Robert Owenson's little daughter, and a 
short poem upon the subject by Lysaght was the first 
thing she ever learned by heart. 

Her christening took place according to agreement, a 
month after her birth, and the occasion was one of rejoic- 
ings truly Irish in their character. A branch of shillalah 
graced the table, and Mr. Owenson, who was a fine musi- 
cian, sang, first in Irish and then in English, the famous 
song of "O'Rourke's Noble Feast," the whole company 
joining enthusiastically in the chorus : 

" Oh you are welcome heartily, 
Welcome, gramachree, 
Welcome heartily, 
Welcome joy ! " 



LADY MORGAN. 85 

Later, the extremely young lady was herself brought 
in, and her health drunk standing with three times 
three, and the significant accompanying words, "Foghan 
Pah," or " wait ' awhile." It was an appropriate toast, 
for a ' while ' not very long raised the little Sydney Owen- 
son, who was thus cordially greeted upon her first appear- 
ance in society, to a position where few of her early 
friends expected to find her. 

Robert Owenson was a gifted and hospitable Irishman; 
the only son of Walter MacOwen.or Owenson, a Con- 
naught farmer, and Sydney Crofton, the orphan grand- 
daughter of Sir Malby Crofton of Longford House. His 
parents had made an indiscreet and romantic marriage. 
They met first at a hurling-match, where* Miss Crofton 
was the Queen of Beauty who awarded the prize, and 
young Owenson the handsome athlete who won it. A 
few weeks after, they ran away together and were mar- 
ried, but the union did not prove a happy one, and the 
bride, who was a woman of talent, consoled herself as 
best she could with music and poetry. So well were her 
efforts appreciated by the neighboring peasants that they 
nicknamed her Clasagh-na- Valla, or Harp of the Valley. 
Her eloquence, however, was of more practical benefit to 
her son, since a certain Mr. Blake was so impressed by 
her recital of the wrongs inflicted by one of his ancestors 
upon a long dead MacOwen, that he carried off young 
Robert to London with him by way of amends. After a 
time a love affair with a pretty singer brought the young 
man into disgrace with his patron, and he took to the 
stage to support himself. A few years later, following 
the family custom, he ran away with and married Miss 
Jane Hill, the sister of a college friend. 

It was from her father that Sydney Owenson, the name- 
sake of poor Clasagh-na-Valla, derived those brilliant and 

winning qualities that made her famous ; but it was her 
6 



86 LADY MORGAN. 

English mother from whom she inherited her practical 
sense and business capacity, and perhaps also what she 
herself describes as her " sacred horror of debt." 

During her early years the family fortunes were 
extremely unsettled, her father striving vainly to earn a 
respectable income by the combined pursuits of wine mer- 
chant and manager of a theatre. She and her younger 
sister Olivia received an irregular education, partly from 
their mother, partly at school. But they did not progress 
satisfactorily, and Sydney in particular was the despair 
of her mother, who had set her heart upon having her 
eldest daughter equal the achievements of a precocious 
little child of Rowland Hill's, who had read the Bible 
through twice before she was five, and knitted all the 
stockings worn by the coachman. Happily for the public 
good Mrs. Owenson's ambition was disappointed ; her elfish 
little girl found it quite impossible to master the genealogy 
of the patriarchs, and could not be made to sit still and 
sew, but nothing that was going on about her escaped her 
inquisitive, bright eyes. She was deeply interested in all 
the trades carried on in the neighborhood, and did her 
best to become acquainted with their mysteries. 

She even went so far as to set up a shop with her 
father's theatrical wigs, choosing for the purpose the 
only window fronting upon the street, and inscribing upon 
it, in her best and biggest hand-writing, Sydney Owen- 
son, System, Tete and Peruke Maker — which was the 
proper form of advertising at that period. What is 
more, she could have carried on the trade had she been 
permitted, having acquired the art through observing 
her father's hair-dresser. 

She was also tolerably well instructed in chimney- 
sweeping, having closely observed the proceedings of a 
number of young sweeps who lived in a cellar across the 
way. On one occasion, when the school chimney caught 



LADY MORGAN. 8? 

fire, she dashed out into the street and summoned in the 
the whole tribe of them to the rescue. They put out the 
fire, but filled the room with soot, greatly to the indigna- 
tion of the school-mistress, who turned them all out into 
the street for their pains, and Sydney with them. 

It was at about this time that she made her first liter- 
ary venture. She was the happy owner of a large number 
of pets, chiefly among which was a great yellow cat, 
named Ginger. Ginger and Mrs. Owenson were not on 
the best of terms, and the discerning animal was glad to 
keep herself out of that lady's way, in a snug nook 
arranged for her underneath the sideboard by her little 
mistress. One evening, as Sydney was kneeling at her 
mother's knee, concluding her nightly prayer, with a 
blessing invoked upon her various friends, a soft purr was 
heard issuing from this retreat. Moved by so touching 
an appeal, she added to her usual petition the words,. 
44 God bless Ginger the cat ! " Mrs. Owenson, much 
shocked, caught her by the shoulder and shook her, say- 
ing: 

44 What do you mean by that, you stupid child ? " 
44 May I not say, 4 bless Ginger ? ' " asked Sydney. 
44 Certainly not," replied Mrs. Owenson. 
44 Why mama ? " 

44 Because Ginger is not a Christian ! " 
44 Why is not Ginger a Christian ? " 
44 Why ? Because Ginger is only an animal." 
44 Am I a Christian, mama, or an animal ?" 
At this point Molly, the devoted household servant, 
was abruptly requested to take those troublesome children 
to bed, and teach them not to ask foolish questions. But 
even bed did not end the matter. Sydney's warmest 
feelings were aroused in sympathy with her poor un- 
christian favorite, and while lying awake she composed 
a poem in its honor, which was next morning recited in 



88 LADY MORGAN. 

the kitchen amid great applause. James the butler took 
it down from the lips of the young poet ; Molly corrected 
the proof; and at breakfast it was read to the family, 
winning praise from Mr. Owenson, and, which was 
more important, a pardon for both Sydney and Ginger. 
Here it is : 

" My dear pussy cat, 
Were I a mouse or rat 

Sure I never would run off from you ; 
You're so funny and gay 
With your tail when you play, 

And no song is so sweet as your mew. 

11 But pray keep in your press, 
And don't make a mess 

When you share with your kittens our posset ; 
For mama can't abide you, 
And I cannot hide you, 

Except you keep close in your closet. " 

In spite of Mrs. Owenson's antipathy to Ginger, and to 
most other things which her daughter particularly liked, 
Sydney was very fond of her mother, and her death a few 
years later was a terrible blow to her. It was thought 
best for the children to be out of the way for a few days 
after the event, and they were sent to stay with a friend 
who lived some miles distant. Sydney was not content 
to be separated from her father in his time of trouble. 
Twice she was captured and detained when about to 
return ; but the third time she succeeded in squeezing 
herself through a hole cut in the barn-door for the dog, and 
ran the whole way home, never pausing till she found 
her father and threw herself into his arms. 

During the next few years the condition of Mr. Owen- 
son's business became worse and worse, till it at last 
resulted in bankruptcy, and he went away to Limerick to 
await a final meeting of his creditors. It was the girls' 






LADY MORGAN. 89 

vacation at the time, and they were left at home under 
the guardianship o£ the faithful Molly until their school 
should reopen, the true cause of their father's journey 
being unknown to thorn. But Sydney was not easily kept 
in the dark, and it was not long before her father received 
a letter from her, containing a strange mingling of fore- 
sight and simplicity. 

" Mr. O'F has been here," she wrote. " He has 

told me all, and I have seen your name on the list of 
Statutes of Bankruptcy. He said it was the best and 
honestest, indeed, the only thing that could be done, and 
that you will come out of this terrible dilemma as well 
considered and respected as you have hitherto lived ; but 
that time, and great economy, and your resuming your 
theatrical position with Mr. Daly at the Theatre Royal, 
were indispensable. Now, for all this, dear sir, we must 
relieve you from the terrible expense you have been at 
for our education. Of this, I am resolved to relieve you, 
and to earn money for you instead of spending the little 
you will have for some time to come." 

An important statement in italics, follows : " Now, 
dear papa, I have two novels nearly finished ! " 

Her plan was to go out as a governess while she 
finished these works, and she had already heard of two 
situations, either of which she thought she could fill. A 
short postscript to the letter shows that her talent for 
being agreeable had already begun to be recognized. 

" P. S. Captain Earle and Captain White Benson, who 
you may remember at Kilkenny were always running 
after us, called yesterday ; but Molly would not let them 
in, which I thought was rather impertinent of her. 
However, as things are at present, I believe it was all for 
the best." 

Her next letter shows the manner in which she faced 
the embarrassments of her position. She begins by com- 



9° LADY MORGAN. 

plaining of a certain " odious Mrs. Anderson," who 
wanted her bill paid, and was " insolent " about it, and 
also of the landlady, who not only detained their piano, 
a hired one, when they wished to return it to the owners, 
but gave them warning to leave next week. Molly the 
dauntless defended the rights of her young charges, and 
the contest of words threatened at one time, greatly to 
their terror, to become a passage of arms. When this 
excitement was over the three sat down and indulged in 
a hearty cry, in the midst of which arrived M. Fontaine, 
Mr. Owenson's old ballet-master, and a devoted friend. 
He was in a carriage on his way to Dublin Castle, where 
he had recently been appointed Master of Ceremonies. 

"Poor darling old gentleman," wrote Sydney to her 
" dearest Dad," " I thought he was going to cry with us 
(for we told him everything), instead of which, however, 
he threw up the window and cried out, ' Come up then, 
Martin my son, with your little violin y ; and up comes 
Martin, more ugly and absurd than ever, with his little 
i kit ' ; and what does dear old Fontaine do but put us in 
a circle,, that we might dance a chassez-d-la-ronde, saying, 
4 enliven yourselves, my children, that is the only thing ' ; 
and only think, there we were ; the next minute we were 
all of us — Molly, Martin, and Monsieur included — danc- 
ing away to the tune i What a Beau your Granny is * 
(the only one that Martin can play), and we were all 
laughing ready to die until Livy gave Molly, who was in 
the way, a kick behind ; she fell upon Martin, who fell 
upon his father, who fell upon me — and there we were, 
all sprawling like a pack of cards and laughing ; and 
then, dear papa, Fontaine sent off Martin in the carriage 
to the confectioner's in Grafton street for some ices and 
biscuits ; so that we had quite a feast and no time to 
think or be sorrowful." 

Better even than this, the merry and wise old French- 



LADY MORGAN. 9 1 

man carried the girls off with him to the Castle, where 
they spent a triumphant evening, listening to songs and 
readings, observing the noted people present, and finally 
(owing to a judicious word from M. Fontaine to their 
hostess, Countess O'Haggerty) themselves singing a duet 
which took the company by storm. 

Twice disappointed in her hope of obtaining a situa- 
tion — both the places mentioned in her letter to her father 
being denied her on account of her youth — Sydney 
Owenson was at last engaged as governess and com- 
panion for the daughters of Mr. Featherstone, two pleas- 
ant girls of about her own age. The arrangement was 
made by their mother, while visiting in Dublin, and it 
was settled that Miss Owenson should join the family a 
few days later at their country seat, Bracklin Castle. 

She was to leave Dublin by the night coach, and M. 
Fontaine, ever gay and ever friendly, gave a farewell party 
in her honor on the very evening of her departure. 
There was no danger of her missing the coach, he assured 
her, since it passed close by at the head of the street, and 
the driver had promised to blow his horn. She could 
bring her traveling dress with her in her bag, and change 
her costume before starting. 

The party took place, and was highly successful. 
Indeed, so great was the general hilarity that the passage 
of time was forgotten, and in the midst of the dance, 
just as Miss Owenson was flying merrily through " Money 
in Both Pockets," with her favorite partner, the horn 
sounded its warning blast from the corner. There was 
not a moment to lose ; a change of dress was not to be 
thought of. With her own bonnet hastily clapped on her 
head, and Molly's long cloak thrown over her shoulders, 
she dashed out of the door, accompanied by her partner 
bearing her valise, and escorted on her way by the whole 
excited company in a body. She made the best speed 



92 LADY MORGAN. 

she could, her pink silk shoes glancing over the icy pave- 
ment, and her muslin ball dress fluttering in the wind — 
and reached the stage just as the grumbling driver was 
preparing to go on without her. 

At Kinigad, where she arrived late at night very tired 
and sleepy, she retired at once to her room in the inn, 
too confused to remember her baggage, and sure that she 
would have plenty of time to change her dress in the morn- 
ing, before the carriage from Bracklin came to her. But 
what was her dismay when she rose and asked for her bag, 
to find that it had gone on with the stage ! She could but 
resign herself to the inevitable, and towards noon, after 
a long drive, she presented herself in the drawing-room 
of the Castle, " pinched, cold, confused, and miserable," 
to claim her new position. The whole family was assem- 
bled, and a general titter greeted her appearance, Mr. 
Featherstone alone regarding her fantastic attire with 
severe disapproval. For a moment she was daunted, 
but her native courage soon revived, and she told her 
story with such vividness and spirit, that her audience 
were completely overcome with mingled mirth and com- 
passion for her sad plight, and as soon as she had con- 
cluded she was born off in a gale of laughter by the two 
girls, who ransacked their wardrobes to find her some- 
thing to wear. 

Nor was this all. At dinner, Mrs. Featherstone intro- 
duced her to two tutors, the parish priest, and the 
Protestant curate of the neighboring village, and she 
kept the table in a roar during the whole meal, while the 
servants who waited nearly choked themselves by stuff- 
ing napkins in their mouths, in a vain attempt to refrain 
from laughing. So pleased were her companions, that at 
dessert the priest, Father Murphy, arose with a glass of 
port wine in his hand to drink her health. After a polite 
bow and a " By your leave, Madame," to the hostess, ho 
turned to the new governess, exclaiming ; 



LADY MORGAN. 93 

" This is a hearty welcome to ye to Westmeath, Miss 
Owenson ; and this is to your health, mind, and body ! " 

Music followed, and she delighted her hearers with 
" Barbara Allen," and her favorite Irish song, "Ned of 
the Hills." The applause with which these selections 
were received was interrupted by the entrance of the but- 
ler, who announced that a piper had come from Castle- 
town, " to play in Miss Owenson." At once the young 
ladies proposed a dance in the hall; partners were chosen ; 
the music struck up ; the servants crowded about the 
open doors to look on ; and Sydney Owenson, always one 
of the lightest and most graceful of dancers, concluded 
her first day as a governess with an exultant Irish jig. 

Imagine such a debut as this in a staid English or 
American family ! 

In spite, however, of her startling entrance upon the 
scene, she fulfilled the duties of her position conscien- 
tiously and successfully, and devoted most of her leisure 
time to the completion of one of the two half-finished 
novels. The work was finally concluded in Dublin, where 
the Featherstones spent a portion of each year, and she 
determined to see it safely in the hands of the printer 
before returning to Bracklin Castle. The novel had 
been accomplished alone and unaided, and she resolved 
to keep her secret to the last, though she did not even 
know the difference between a publisher and a book- 
seller. 

She rose early one morning, glided quietly down the 
stairs, appropriated to her own use the cloak and market- 
bonnet of the cook, which she found hanging in the hall, 
and slipped out of the house unperceived, carrying her 
manuscript neatly tied with a rose-colored ribbon under 
her arm. She had not the least idea where to go, and 
wandered about the business streets of the city, frightened 
and uncertain, until her eye fell upon a sign bearing tho 



94 LADY MORGAN. 

words : " T. Smith, Printer and Bookseller." As she 
entered the doorway, the impish shop-boy, who was sweep- 
ing ont the place, sent a cloud of dust into her face, then 
dropping his broom leaned his elbows on the counter and 
inquired : 

" What do you plaize to want, Miss ? " 

" The gentleman of the house," she managed to reply. 

" Which of them, young or ould ? " asked the boy ; but 
before she could answer an inner door opened, and a 
young soldier in full uniform, his musket over his 
shoulder, entered whistling " The Irish Volunteers," and 
stopped short, surprised at the unexpected apparition of 
an exceedingly pretty girl in an exceedingly ugly bonnet. 

To add to the discomfort of the situation, the shop-boy, 
with a wink, put in his word : " Here's a young Miss wants 
to see yer, Master James ; " whereupon Master James, 
much flattered by the announcement, advanced smilingly 
and chucked Miss Owenson under the chin. Before she 
could find words to resent this familiarity, an elderly 
gentleman in a great passion burst into the room, half- 
shaved, and still holding his razor and shaving cloth in 
his hand, and ordered the young soldier to be off " like a 
sky-rocket" to join his company, which was about to 
march. He then turned to poor Miss Owenson, and 
addressing her as " Honey," bade her sit down and lie 
would be back in a jiffy. He vanished, but soon returned 
in a more presentable condition, and inquired what ha 
could do for her. She was too confused to reply immedi- 
ately, but alter he had repeated the question she answered 
faintly, beginning to untie the rose-colored ribbon : 

" I want to sell a book, please." 

"To sell a book, dear? An ould one? fori sell new 
ones myself. And what is the name of it, and what is it 
about?" 

The title, she told him, was St. Clair, and it was a novel 






LADY MORGAN. 95 

of sentiment, after the manner of Werter. But, unfor- 
tunately, Mr. Smith had never heard of " Werter," and, 
moreover, he was not a publisher at all. He told her so 
very good-naturedly, and the young authoress, " hot, 
hungry, flurried, and mortified," as she says in describing 
the incident, began to tie up her manuscript with unsteady 
fingers. She tried to meet the blow bravely, but tears 
came into her eyes in spite of herself, and kind-hearted 
Mr. Smith melted at once. 

"Don't cry, dear — don't cry," he said consolingly. 
" There's money bid for you yet ! But you're very young 
to turn author, and what's your name, dear ? " 

" Owenson, sir," she replied. 

The name acted like an charm. Mr. Smith, who was 
an old friend of her father, asked her into the parlor and 
wrote a letter recommending her to Mr. Brown, a noted 
publisher of novels. So, courtesying, blushing, and wiping 
her eyes, she took her leave and set forth in search of 
Mr. Brown. 

She found him without much trouble — a little old man 
in a bob-wig, looking over papers at a counter — and pre- 
sented her letter, which he seemed by no means pleased 
to receive. He was still frowning at it when his wife 
entered from an inner room where breakfast was prepared, 
exclaiming : 

" Mr. Brown, your tea is as cold as ice ! " 

Then, taking possession of the note, she asked what 
tliat was. 

" A young lady who wants me to publish her novel, 
which I can't do," was the discouraging reply; "my 
hands are full already." 

Poor Miss Owenson raised her handkerchief to her 
eyes ; but Mrs. Brown, pitying her distress, told her to 
leave the book and she would see that it was carefully 
read. St. CLir, p'nk ribbons and all, remained on Mr. 



g6 LADY MORGAN. 

Brown's counter, and a little later its venturous young 
author entered her house unnoticed, returned her bor- 
rowed garments to their place, and joined the Feather- 
stones at breakfast. Next day she went with the family 
to Bracklin, having forgotten to leave her address with 
the publisher. 

She heard no more of St. Clair, until, during her next 
visit to Dublin, she accompanied Mrs. Featherstone to 
call on an invalid friend, and found a printed copy of her 
novel lying upon the window seat. She promptly com- 
municated with Mr. Brown, who presented her with four 
copies — and nothing more. The book had some success, 
and was even translated into German with a remarkable 
preface, stating that the writer had strangled herself with 
a handkerchief for love. She afterwards rewrote it, and 
the new version was published in England. 

She left the Featherstones in 1801, and in 1805 pub* 
lished her second novel, " The Novice of St. Dominic." 
Her handwriting was extremely illegible, and the work 
(it was in six volumes) was copied out for her as fast as 
she wrote it by Francis Crossley, a youth of eighteen, one 
of the most devoted of her many admirers. The book 
was issued in London, and she was promptly paid for it. 
Of the sum she received — her first literary earnings — the 
greater part was sent to her father ; the rest she spent in 
purchasing a winter cloak and an Irish harp. 

Her next effort, " The Wild Irish Girl," was in a new 
vein. It treated of the Irish scenes with which she was 
familiar, and described them with the humor, the fervor, 
and the patriotic feeling that marked her own truly Irish 
character. The plot was based upon an incident in her 
own life, and the fact that public opinion identified her 
with her heroine, is shown by the letters she received 
from her friends, in which she is quite as often addressed 
by the name of Grlorvina, as by that of Sydney. Some 



LADY MORGAN. 97 

of her notes from Lord Abereorn begin simply " Dear 
Little Glo." The book had an immediate and triumphant 
success, and from that time until her death she was one 
of the most conspicuous figures in the literature and 
society of her day. 

In 1810, after much hesitation, she once more resigned 
her liberty to accept the pressing invitation of Lord and 
Lady Abereorn to become a member of their household. 
This decision affected the course of her whole life, since 
it was at their house that she met her future husband, Sir 
Charles, then plain Doctor Morgan. Lady Abereorn, a 
benevolent but not very adroit woman, equally attached 
to her sprightly companion and her handsome young 
physician, soon determined to arrange a match between 
them. It was some time before they met ; but she made 
such good use of her opportunities to praise each to the 
other, that Miss Owenson (at her request) had already 
written a humorous mock " Diploma of the University of 
Saint Glorvina " for the doctor, before ever seeing him ; 
while that gentleman on his part conceived so deep a 
prejudice against a woman whom he pictured as an 
uncomfortable paragon, that he determined to avoid her 
at all hazards. But fate decreed otherwise. One day, as 
he was quietly seated talking with Lady Abereorn, the 
door opened and a servant announced " Miss Owenson." 
He started to his feet at once, intent upon flight ; there 
was but one door ; and, as Miss Owenson entered it, she 
caught a glimpse of the dismayed Doctor just escaping by 
the window. 

This was a little too much to be borne. Her vanity was 
touched, and when they were at last brought together she 
exerted herself to the utmost to please him, with such 
alarming success that he fell desperately in love with her ; 
and, Lord and Lady Abereorn helping him to urge his 
suit, he was engaged to her at the end of a month. But 



9 8 LADY MORGAN. 

the Wild Irish Girl had been taken by surprise, not fairly 
won, and no sooner had she given him her promise than 
she took fright at the terrible suddenness of the event. 
She begged leave of absence to visit her father, who was 
ill, promising to come back in a fortnight, although she 
had inwardly resolved to remain away several months at 
least, if ever she returned at all. Indeed, in after life 
she used frankly to say that for her perversity at this 
period she had deserved to miss marrying the best hus- 
band that ever woman had. 

One excuse followed another, and still she did not 
come, while the poor Doctor grew every day more angry 
and miserable. His letters to her are filled with mingled 
reproach, jealousy, tenderness, and despair, with an occa- 
sional standing on his dignity ; hers to him are all evasion, 
contradiction, persuasion, affection, and petulance. The 
secret of the situation is summoned up in a single one of 
her sentences : 

" There was so much of force in the commencement of 
this business, that my heart was frightened back from the 
course it would naturally have taken." 

She returned at last, but even then she would set no 
day for the wedding, and finally Lady Abercorn took the 
matter into her own hands. One bitter January morning 
she entered the library where her intractable protege was 
seated before the fire in her morning wrapper, and said, 
taking her by the arm : 

" Glorvina, come up stairs directly and be married ; 
there must be no more trifling." 

Poor Glorvina, too astonished to protest, submitted 
meekly to be led into another * room, where Sir Charles 
(he had been knighted at Lord Abercorn's request) stood 
awaiting her, in company with a chaplain attired in full 
canonicals. She was married there and then, and not 
even the guests in the house knew anything about it until 






LADY MORGAN. 99 

several days later, when Lord Abercorn, after dinner, 
filled his glass and invited them to drink to the health of 
" Sir Charles and Lady Morgan ! " 

Lady Morgan's married life was unusually happy. Her 
husband was devoted to her, and, far from being jealous 
of her fast increasing fame, was extremely proud of it, 
and rendered her valuable assistance in her literary labors. 

She in her turn always noted with peculiar pleasure 
any complimentary reference to his medical works, for 
he, too, was an excellent writer in his own province, and 
rejoiced in the attentions paid him. 

They soon became familiar figures in society, where 
Lady Morgan's agreeable talents had always made her 
popular, and when they visited the continent they were 
received at once into the most brilliant circles of Paris, 
Florence, Rome, and Brussels. In her " France " and 
* Italy," Lady Morgan describes in her usual vivid manner 
many of the interesting people whom they met. In 
France she associated on terms of intimacy with the 
Marquise de Villette (the Belle et Bonne of Voltaire), 
who obtained her admission to the order of Free Masons. 
She was much with Talma, who gave his most famous 
recitations in her salon ; with Humboldt, of whom she 
always speaks with reverent affection ; and with that most 
un-American of Americans, Madame Patterson-Bonaparte. 
To us, perhaps, the most interesting of all her friends is 
Lafayette. She gives us a delightful reminiscence of the 
Lafayette family at La Grange, where she was for some 
time a favored guest. 

" We arrived at sunset last evening," she writes, " and 
the old tower covered with the ivy planted by Charles 
Fox shone out in strong relief from the dark woods 
behind ; but the brightest of all sunshine was the dear 
Lafayette's own noble countenance, beaming with smiles 
and cordiality as he stood at the castle gate to receive us, 



100 LADY MORGAN. 

surrounded by his children and grandchildren and other 
members of his family." 

The grandchildren were twelve in number ; yet during 
the whole time she was there, Lady Morgan mentions 
that she never heard the cry of a child, nor observed any 
symptoms of a dispute. Besides this large family there 
were several visitors at the castle. Two American gentle- 
men were there ; and Carbonel, who composed the music 
for Beranger's songs ; and Scheffer, then a rising young 
artist, who painted Lady Morgan's picture. At dinner, 
where there were seldom fewer than from twenty to thirty 
guests, Lafayette was always placed at the center of the 
table between his two youngest grandchildren. In fine 
weather they spent much of the day out of doors, wander- 
ing about the beautiful grounds, lying upon the grass, or 
fishing in the pools. 

In the evening, every one gathered about a huge wood 
fire, roaring upon the cavernous stone hearth, and listened 
to Lafayette's anecdotes of historic personages, or Lady 
Morgan's Irish stories, or CarbonePs music. Sometimes, 
in one of Beranger's spirited songs — La Sainte Alliance 
was a great favorite — the whole company would join in 
the chorus, till the roof rang. 

Sunday, Lady Morgan tells us, was always a peculiarly 
joyous day at La Grange. 

"On Sunday," she writes to her sister Olivia, " there 
was a village festival, and we all walked down to the 
village to join it. It was completely such a scene as one 
sees at the opera. The villages here are very straggling, 
and resemble English hamlets rather than towns ; but the 
scene of action was principally in a little square before 
the gates of a little nunnery, where all the nuns were 
assembled in their habits, in the midst of the fun. . . . 
The beaux had their hair powdered as white as snow, with 
immense queues, and dimity jackets and trousers : the 



LADY MORGAN. IOI 

women in such caps as I brought over, with a profusion 
of lace, gold crosses, white gowns, and scarlet aprons. At 
four o'clock the ball began on the green. It is astonish- 
ing to see with what perfection men, women, and children 
dance the quadrilles, which are here called country dances, 
and how serious they all look. We left them hard at it, 
and retired to dinner at five. They all came up to the 
General to speak to him. He shook hands with all the 
old folk, and talked to them of tljeir farms. It was one 
of the most delightful scenes you can imagine. My 
English dress excited great amazement, especially a long 
grey cloak I brought from London. In the evening there 
was (as there is every Sunday evening) a ball at the 
castle. After coffee we all went down to the hall, and 
there children, guests, masters, mistresses, and servants 
joined together in the dance, as they had done in the 
morning at prayers ; for there is a chapel belonging to the 
chateau, where the priest of the parish officiates. The serv- 
ants danced in the quadrilles — six femmes-de-chambre, 
and all the lacqueys. Oscar and Octavie, the two young 
ones, three and four years old, danced every quadrille, 
and never once wero out; in short, these scenes of 
innocence and gaiety and primitive manners are daily 
repeated." 

Lafayette himself, while the dancing went on, " stood 
looking on and leaning on his stick, the happiest of the 
happy." 

The books which Lady Morgan published during her 
married life — including the novels of "O'Donnel" and 
v - Florence McCarthy" — were far more generally read 
than any of her previous works, with the exception of 
" The Wild Irish Girl." Her career was one of almost 
uninterrupted success and happiness, until the death of 
her husband in 1843. After that, although her wit and 
mirth remained to her, there was always a certain under- 



102 LADY MORGAN. 

tone of sorrow in Lady Morgan's longer letters ; and, as 
she grew older, it is sad to find her noting the death of 
one old friend after another, always with a few words of 
genuine appreciation. 

She was fond of society until the end, and on St. 
Patrick's Day, a week before the beginning of her last 
illness, she gave a musical morning party, of which she 
was herself the life and soul. 

She was not aware until the last that her illness was 
serious, and she dictated cheerful notes to her friends 
relative to her condition. On the very day of her death 
she called for her desk and tried to write a letter, but was 
obliged to give up the attempt. Shortly after, her breath 
began to fail her, and she turned to her favorite niece, 
who was supporting her, and asked, " Sydney, is this 
death?" 

After that she only spoke a few times to thank her 
friends and her servants, who were also her friends, for 
the services they rendered her. She died quietly and 
painlessly, in the evening of April 16, 1859, aged about 
seventy-six years. 

So lived and so died the Wild Irish Girl. She was the 
joy of every circle she entered, and her works, some of 
which are still read with pleasure, form an agreeable part 
of the record of her time. 



MARIA THERESA. 

OUGHT women to vote ? This is one of the questions 
of the day. Many men would be disposed to favor 
the admission of women to the ballot but for one objection. 
If, say they, women can vote for President, why should 
they not be eligible to the office of President ? Very 
well ; suppose they were. When we consider that the two 
greatest empires of modern times have been governed by 
women, and when we consider also how many of the 
nations of the earth have been governed badly by men, 
why should we think it so terrible a thing to have a woman 
at the head of this Republic? It is true, we are not 
likely to witness such an event, but if it should occur, 
the nation would probably survive it. 

Let us see in what manner the great Maria Theresa 
ruled for forty years the extensive and ill-assorted empire 
of Austria. 

Born in 1717, the eldest daughter of the Emperor ? 
Charles VI, she married in her nineteenth year, Francis, 
the Duke of Lorraine, and in her twenty-third year, upon 
the death of her father, was proclaimed Empress of the 
sixteen different states and territories which made up the 
Austrian empire. Her father was a man of limited 
capacity, though of respectable character, and left to his 
daughter an empty treasury, a small, disorganized army, 
and a disputed succession. Although all the great pow- 
ers, during the lifetime of the Emperor, had solemnly 
engaged to recognize his daughter as the legitimate heir, 

105 



I06 MARIA THERESA. 

no sooner had the news of his death spread over Europe, 
than all of them, except the King of England, questioned 
her claims, and several of them took measures to seize 
portions of her inheritance. It was the general opinion 
of Europe that the impoverished empire, under the sway 
of a young woman, would fall to pieces almost of itself, 
and that the only question was, respecting the division of 
its provinces among adjacent states. 

While the other powers were negotiating and arming with 
a view to the dismemberment of Austria, Frederick II, the 
young King of Prussia, availing himself of the splendid 
army and the vast treasures accumulated by his father, 
suddenly invaded the Austrian province of Silesia, and 
marched with such rapidity that, in a few weeks, he had 
possessed himself of almost the whole province. Fred- 
erick then offered to the young Empress to establish her 
in the possession of all her other states, and to give her 
a subsidy of five million of francs, on the single condition 
of her ceding to Prussia the province of Silesia, which 
Frederick claimed as rightfully belonging to his kingdom. 
Threatened as she was by France, Holland, and Spain, 
it would have been only prudent in her to have accepted 
this offer. But with the Imperial crown, she inherited 
also an Imperial pride. She rejected the proposal with 
as much promptitude and disdain, as though she had 
been the mistress of powerful armies and inexhaustible 
treasuries. 

In this extremity she repaired to Hungary, where the 
celebrated scene occurred with the Diet of that country. 
Presenting to the assembled nobles her infant child, she 
appealed to their compassion and their loyalty, saying, 
with tears in her eyes : 

" I have no allies but you in the world." 

Whereupon, her husband shouted : 

" Life and blood for our Queen and kingdom." 



MARIA THERESA. IGJ 

" Yes" exclaimed the members of the Diet, " our life 
and blood." 

Some timely help, too, came from George II of 
England, and it was with English guineas and Hungarian 
horsemen that she endeavored to expel Frederick from 
Silesia, and keep at bay the armies of France and Spain. 
Such enthusiasm was there for her in England, that a 
public subscription was started for her benefit. The 
Duchess of Marlborough subscribed the extraordinary 
sum of forty thousand pounds sterling, and other ladies 
of London a hundred thousand more — so touched were 
the susceptible hearts of the English people at the spec- 
tacle of a young and beautiful woman defending her 
hereditary rights against such numerous and powerful 
enemies. The Empress, however, thought it due to her 
dignity to decline this friendly succor, and said to the 
ladies, that she would defend her states by the help of 
her loyal subjects alone. It added to the general interest 
in her fortunes, that she was about again to become a 
mother, and knew not, as she said, whether there would 
remain to her a city in which she could give birth to her 
child. 

Despite the heroic efforts of the Hungarians, she was 
compelled to yield Silesia to the King of Prussia in order 
to detach him from the coalition against her. She then 
waged successful war against her other enemies until, in 
the eighth year of her reign, she concluded a treaty of 
peace which left her mistress of all the ancient posses- 
sions of her house, excepting alone the fine province 
wrested from her by the invincible Frederick. 

After this eight years of most desperate and desolating 
warfare, Maria Theresa enjoyed a precious interval of 
seven years of peace ; which is about the duration of two 
presidential terms. Then it was that, for the first ti 
she could display the gentler and benevolent traits of her 



108 MARIA THERESA. 

character. She employed her power to encourage agri 
culture and reanimate trade. She removed tariffs and 
other barbarous restrictions from the commerce with 
foreign nations. She caused new and better roads to ba 
constructed. She decorated her capital with grand and 
useful edifices, Directly through her encouragement, her 
subjects began to manufacture woolen cloths, silk, and 
porcelain, which remain to this day important branches 
of the national industry. Not content with these merely 
material works, she founded a University, several colleges, 
schools of architecture and design, and three observato- 
ries. She took great pains to make her subjects 
acquainted with improved methods of healing the sick. 
For the old soldiers who had shed their blood in her 
cause, she erected hospitals and asylums. She pensioned 
the widows and dowered the daughters of officers who 
had fallen in war. Above all, in her own life, and in the 
government and education of her family, she set an 
example of purity, wisdom, and devotion, which every 
mother in the world could study with profit. She did 
not think that the labors of governing an empire exempted 
her from the ordinary responsibilities of life. She became 
the mother of ten children, four sons and six daughters, 
all of whom survived her, and all of them, I believe, did 
honor to the character of their mother. 

But she could not reconcile herself to the loss of her 
darling Silesia. Always looking forward to the time 
when she should be in a position to recover that province, 
she strengthened and disciplined her army continually, 
and founded military schools where, officers could be 
trained capable of coping with the veterans of the Prus- 
sian king. At the same time she prepared the way, by 
able diplomacy, to combine the powers of Europe against 
the ambitious Prussians. She stooped even to flatter the 
mistress of the King of France, Madame de Pompadour, 



MARIA THERESA. IO9 

whom, in notes still existing, she styled " my dear friend." 
The great Frederick, on the contrary, would never con- 
descend to notice, officially, the existence of Madame de 
Pompadour, and made her his bitter foe by his contemptu- 
ous silence and stinging sarcasm. He used to call her 
" Petticoat III," in allusion to the fact that she was the 
third mistress of Louis XV; and there were always 
about the two courts busy adherents of the Empress to 
convey to the ears of Pompadour the sneering wit of the 
Prussian monarch. 

By such arts, and others more legitimate, Maria Theresa 
united against Frederick the sovereigns of France, Eng- 
land, Russia, and of several of the States of Germany, 
not doubting for a moment that a kingdom of five mil- 
lions of souls must of necessity succumb before a com- 
bination of States, the united population of which was 
more than a hundred and fifty millions. 

But she did not know her enemy. Informed of the 
secret treaty for the destruction of his kingdom and its 
division among his enemies, Frederick suddenly marched 
with sixty thousand men, and overran Saxony and Bohe- 
mia, and thus began the famous Seven Years' War, 
which only ended when the enemies of Frederick, 
exhausted of men and money, were compelled to leave 
him in peaceful possession of the province he had seized. 
It must be avowed, however, that, in all probability, 
Frederick would have been overwhelmed and finally 
defeated, but for the accession to the throne of Russia of 
Peter III. This emperor had conceived such a passionate 
admiration of the character and exploits of the Prussian 
king that the moment he came upon the throne he aban- 
doned the coalition, and withdrew his armies from the 
seat of war. This event occurred in the very nick of 
time. It relieved Frederick and completed the discour- 
agement of his enemies. 



HO MARIA THERESA. 

After the restoration of peace, Maria Theresa renewed 
her exertions for the welfare of her people. Though a 
devout Roman Catholic, she resisted the efforts of the 
Pope to control the ecclesiastical affairs of her empire, 
and so checked the power of the Inquisition that her 
successors were able to suppress that terrible institution. 
One of her best acts was the abolition of torture in the 
administration of justice — a reform which was greatly 
due to the eloquent and pathetic denunciations of Vol- 
taire. At that time, in almost every country, criminals 
were put to the torture, either to compel them to confess 
their own guilt or to reveal the names of their accom- 
plices. The unhappy prisoner, pale and trembling with 
terror, was conducted to a vault underground, and there, 
in the presence of a magistrate and recording clerks, he 
was subjected to increasing degrees of anguish, until the 
attending surgeon decided that he could bear no more 
without danger of his life. Many poor wretches, to gain 
a moment's respite from agony, accused innocent persons, 
who, denying their guilt, were in turn subjected to the 
same infernal cruelty. The first monarch of continental 
Europe to abolish this most irrational and horrid system 
was Frederick the Great ; the second was Catherine II, 
of Russia ; the third was Maria Theresa ; the fourth was 
Louis XVI, of France. Readers may remember that 
when the benevolent Howard made his tours among the 
jails of Europe, about the time of the American Revolu- 
tion, he found the torture chamber in almost every city 
that he visited, and in many of them it was still employed. 

It used to be considered a stain upon the administer 
tion of the Empress Maria Theresa that she consented to 
the dismemberment of Poland, and to accept a large por- 
tion of that country as her share of the spoil. More 
recent writers, however, who have looked into that affair 
closely, are disposed to think the act justifiable and even 



MARIA THERESA. Ill 

necessary. One thing is pretty certain ; if a country can 
be dismembered, it soon will be, unless it is the interest 
of some great power or powers to protect it. 

Mary Theresa died in 1780, aged 63, bequeathing to 
her son, Joseph, an empire far more united, prosperous, 
and powerful than the Austria which she inherited from 
her father. When the news of her death was brought to 
Frederick, the greatest of her enemies, he wrote to his 
friend, D'Alembert, the French author : 

" I have shed some very sincere tears at her death. 
She has done honor to her sex and to the throne. I have 
made war upon her, but I have never been her enemy." 

Of the female sovereigns of Europe in modern times, 
Maria Theresa was, probably, the ablest and the most 
virtuous. Her errors were those of her rank and blood ; 
her good actions were the result of her own noble heart 
and generous mind. Austria still styles her the Mother 
of her country, and remembers with fondness one of her 
sayings : 

" I reproach myself for the time I consume in sleep ; 
it is so much taken away from the service of my people/' 



LADY FRANKLIN. 

THREE women have a claim to be associated with 
the name of Sir John Franklin. The lady whom 
he first married, Miss Eleanor Porden, is one of them. 
It was she who, knowing how fatal a brief delay may be 
to an arctic expedition, bade her husband set sail for the 
northern seas at the appointed time, although she was 
then in the last stages of consumption. He sailed, and it 
proved to be her last wish that he obeyed, for she died 
the day after his departure. 

His second wife was the Lady Franklin of whom all 
the world has heard. It was to her untiring efforts (in 
all of which she was devotedly aided by Sir John's niece, 
the late Miss Sophia Cracroft), that the solution to the 
mystery which so long shrouded the fate of the explorer 
and his ill-starred vessels, was due. 

Lady Franklin, whose maiden name was Jane Griffin, 
was born in 1794, and was married to Sir John Franklin 
in 1828, when she was thirty-four years of age. Ten 
years later she accompanied him to Van Dieman's Land, 
(now Tasmania,) of which he had been appointed gov- 
ernor. She early gained the good will of the inhabitants, 
and was noted among them both for her many deeds of 
private beneficence, and for the active, efficient aid which 
she rendered her husband in his public duties. She 
showed especial interest in the welfare of poor emigrants, 
and of the convicts who, after transportation to New South 
Wales was abolished, were sent to Tasmania from all 

112 




LADY FRANKLIN, 



LADY FRANKLIN. 115 

parts of the British Empire. That Sir John and Lady 
Franklin acquired, not only the approval, but the affection of 
the colonists, is shown by the comments of the local press 
upon their departure for England at the expiration of 
Sir John's administration. A few years later Lady 
Franklin had the melancholy pleasure of receiving from 
them a large sum of money to assist her in prosecuting 
her search for her lost husband and the records of his 
expedition, and they further testified their remembrance of 
him by erecting a statue in his honor at Hobart Town. 

Sir John's success as an arctic discoverer led the 
English government in 1845 to offer him the command 
of an expedition to sail in search of the Northwest pas- 
sage, a duty which he gladly accepted. Two ships, the 
" Erebus " and " Terror," were provided, and an additional 
transport to convey stores as far as Disco, in Greenland. 
These three vessels sailed from Greenhithe on the nine- 
teenth of May. 

The " Erebus " and " Terror," which were fine ships 
fitted expressly for arctic service, and victualled for three 
years, were last seen in Baffin's Bay by a whaler, lying 
moored to an iceberg. All was then going well. In 
letters written home a few days previous to this, the 
officers of the expedition expressed ardent hope and per- 
fect confidence in their commander, while Sir John him- 
self, writing to Lady Franklin, assured her cheerfully of 
his well-being, and dwelt upon the future with joyous 
anticipations of success. Not one of his hundred and 
thirty-four officers and men lived to return. 

At the end of two years, nothing further having been 
heard from the expedition, preparations were begun for 
the too probable necessity of sending them assistance. 
As time passed the feeling of uneasiness deepened, and 
&t last was begun that noble series of attempts made by 
both English and Americans, which resulted after four- 
teen years only in the sad discovery of the truth. 



Il6 LADY FRANKLIN. 

In 1848 three expeditions, expensively fitted out and 
ably commanded, were sent by the government in search 
of the missing explorers. They all failed ; but the failure 
did not cause discouragement either to the government 
or the people of England. It served instead as a spur, 
urging them to new efforts, made on a scale that would 
insure success. The first step was taken by the Lords 
of the Admiralty, who in March, 1849, offered a reward 
of twenty thousand pounds to any man or party who 
should render efficient aid to Sir John Franklin or his 
men. A second reward of three thousand pounds was 
offered by Lady Franklin, who also, at her own expense, 
sent a supply of coal and provisions to be deposited on 
the coast of Lancaster Sound. These were landed upon 
the conspicuous promontory of Cape Hay, for the use of 
the missing party, should they visit that region. She had 
already sent, by a ship of one of the earlier expeditions, 
a large quantity of similar stores, which had been buried 
at prominent points along the coast, the place being 
marked in each case by a tall signal post, with an arrow 
painted upon it, pointing out the exact spot where the 
articles were concealed. 

It was in this year also that she addressed to the Presi- 
dent of the United States her well-known appeal, in which 
she called upon the Americans as a " kindred people to 
join heart and hand in the enterprise of snatching the 
lost navigators from a dreary grave." After referring to 
the reward offered by the British Government, she said : 

" This announcement, which, even if the sum offered 
had been doubled or trebled, would have met with public 
approbation, comes, however, too late for our whalers 
which had unfortunately sailed before it was issued, and 
which, even if the news should overtake them at their 
fishing grounds, are totally unfitted for any prolonged 
adventure, having only a few months' provisions on board, 



LADY FRANKLIN. 117 

and no additional clothing. To the American whalers, 
both in the Atlantic and Pacific, I look with more hope 
as competitors for the prize, being well aware of their 
number and strength, their thorough equipment, and the 
bold spirit of enterprise that animates their crews. But 
I venture to look even beyond these. I am not without 
hope that you will deem it not unworthy of a great and 
kindred nation to take up the cause of humanity in which 
I plead in a national spirit, and thus generously make it 
your own." 

The Secretary of State, Mr. Clayton, at once sent an 
encouraging reply to Lady Franklin, and President Taylor, 
calling the attention of Congress to the matter in a special 
message, stated his earnest desire that all possible assist- 
ance should be rendered. He had already caused notice 
of the rewards offered, and information regarding the 
probable means of finding the lost vessels, to be circulated 
among whalers and seafaring men all over the country. 
Popular feeling favored Lady Franklin and her cause, 
and when Mr. Henry Grinnell of New York offered to 
provide two fully equipped vessels at his own expense, 
asking only that the government would transfer to them 
some thirty men from the navy, there was a general 
desire that the proposition should be accepted. Memo- 
rials to that effect were sent to Congress from the cities 
of New York and Philadelphia. The matter was not 
decided, however, for a year. 

In 1850 the two Grinnell vessels, the " Advance " and 
"Rescue," sailed under the command of Lieutenant De 
Haven. In the same year and for the same purpose there 
went from England, in all, ten other vessels. Of these 
two, the " Lady Franklin," a fine vessel of two hundred and 
twenty tons, and the " Sophia" (named after Miss Cracroft), 
a brig of one hundred and twenty tons, were fitted out at 
Lady Franklin's desire and mainly at her own expense. 



I 1 8 LADY FRANKLIN, 

They were placed under the command of Captain Penny. 
A third vessel, the " Prince Albert," was paid for by Lady 
Franklin and her friends. She defrayed two-thirds of the 
expense by means of selling out of the funds all the 
money which she could legally dispose of. The com- 
mander of the "Albert " was Captain Forsyth, who volun- 
teered for the service and would accept no pay. Indeed, 
the number of volunteers who desired no other compensa- 
tion than the honor of aiding in the search was a marked 
feature in the long series of arctic voyages made with 
the intent of learning Sir John Franklin's fate. 

The result of the daring and persistent explorations of 
these twelve vessels may be summed up in a few words. 
Captain Ommaney, commanding the " Assistance," dis- 
covered at Beachy Head traces of an encampment which 
he supposed to be Franklin's. Lieutenant De Haven, 
of the American expedition, landed and confirmed the 
discovery. Captain Penny of the " Lady Franklin " visited 
the same place, explored it thoroughly, and found all the 
indications of a winter encampment, and the graves of 
three of Franklin's men. The dates upon the headboards 
showed that the party had been there during the winter 
of 1845-6 — that is, the first winter after leaving England. 

In the summer of 1851 the twelve vessels returned 
home, one after another. The " Prince Albert," however, 
was not allowed to remain long in English waters. Lady 
Franklin caused her to be elaborately and expensively 
refitted, her bow and stern sheathed with wrought iron, 
her sides protected by planking, and sent her forth again 
to brave the perils of the North. She sailed in June, 
1851, from Stromness, and Lady Franklin herself came 
down to see her off. After a touching farewell to officers 
and men, she watched her standing out to sea, the Union 
Jack streaming from her peak and the French flag flying 
at the fore. This was in honor of Lieutenant Bellot 



LADY FRANKLIN. 



119 



(second in command), a young Frenchman whom a 
romantic love of adventure had led to leave his native 
country and offer his services to Lady Franklin. 

In 1852 the English government sent out another expe- 
dition of five vessels under the command of Sir Edward 
Belcher. In the same year, in consequence of a rumor 
received through an Esquimaux interpreter, that Sir John 
and his crews had been murdered at Wolstenholme 
Sound, Lady Franklin refitted the screw steamer " Isabel " 
and sent her to investigate the report, which proved to be 
wholly false. The next year this steamer was again 
refitted at her expense, and carried supplies to Captains 
Collinson and M'Clure of the government expedition at 
Behring Strait. 

But it was not untilll854 that further authentic tidings 
were obtained of the missing explorers. In that year 
Dr. Rae, at the head of a land party sent by the Hudson's 
Bay Company, learned from the Esquimaux that, in 1850, 
about forty white men had been seen dragging a boat 
near the north shore of King William's Island, and that, 
later in the season, they had all died from cold and 
hunger. The story was confirmed by the finding among 
the Esquimaux of articles once the property of Sir John 
and his officers, all of which Dr. Rae secured and brought 
back with him. He obtained the reward of ten thousand 
pounds offered by the Admiralty to whomsoever should 
first ascertain the fate of the missing expedition. A 
search party sent next year by the government to the 
spot mentioned by the Esquimaux, recovered many 
further relics. 

Lady Franklin was not satisfied. She had given rp 
all hope of her husband's life. He had been ten years 
lost ; his party was provisioned for but three years ; and 
he was sixty years old when he sailed. But her feelings 
did not permit her to rest until she had rescued any possi- 



120 LADY FRANKLIN, 

ble survivor and recovered the records of the expedition, 
if they yet existed. She appealed to Lord Palmerston to 
make one further attempt. In her memorial she dwelt with 
especial emphasis upon the incident of the " Resolute" 
abandoned by the English during a government search 
expedition, found by an American whaler, refitted, and 
presented by Congress to the Queen. 

" My Lord," she says, " you will not let this rescued and 
restored ship, emblematic of so many enlightened and 
generous sentiments, fail even partially in her signifi- 
cant mission. I venture to hope that she will be 
accepted in the spirit in which she is sent. I humbly 
trust that the American people, and especially that phil- 
anthropic citizen who has spent so largely of his private 
fortune in the search for the lost ships, and to whom 
was committed by his government the entire charge of 
the equipment of the i Resolute/ will be rewarded for 
this signal act of sympathy by seeing her restored to her 
original vocation, so that she may bring back from the 
Arctic seas, if not some living remnant of our long-lost 
countrymen, yet at least the proofs that they have nobly 
perished." 

She adds, that should her request be denied, she will 
herself send out a vessel. The Government, busy with 
affairs in the east, was not willing to fit out another expe- 
dition. 

She kept her word. The last and most successful of 
this long series of adventures and perilous searches, was 
due solely to her heroic persistence. Aided by subscrip- 
tions from her friends, she bought and refitted for Arctic 
service the screw yacht "Fox." Captain M'Clintock. 
already distinguished in former search expeditions, was 
placed in command of her, and she sailed upon the last 
day of June, 1857. Lady Franklin, accompanied by Miss 
Cracroft, came on board to bid the officers farewell. 



LADY FRANKLIN. 121 

Captain M'Clintock, observing her agitation, tried to 
repress the enthusiasm of his men, but in vain. As she 
left the vessel she was saluted by the crew with three 
prolonged, thundering cheers. 

Her letter of instruction to Captain M'Clintock is so 
characteristic that I give it in full : 
" My dear Captain MClintock: 

" You have kindly invited me to give you * instructions,' 
but I cannot bring myself to feel that it would be right 
in me in any way to influence your judgment in the con- 
duct of your noble undertaking ; and indeed I have no 
temptation to do so, since it appears to me that your 
views are almost identical with those which I had inde- 
pendently formed before I had the advantage of being 
thoroughly possessed of yours. But had this been other- 
wise, I trust you would have found me ready to prove 
the implicit confidence I place in you by yielding my own 
views to your more enlightened judgment ; knowing, too, 
as I do, that your whole heart also is in the cause, even 
as my own is. As to the objects of the expedition and 
their relative importance, I am sure you know that the 
rescue of any possible survivor of the ' Erebus * and 
' Terror • would be to me, as it would to you, the noblest 
result of our efforts. 

" To this object I wish every other to be subordinate ; 
and, next to it in importance, is the recovery of the 
unspeakably precious documents of the expedition, pub- 
lic and private, and the personal relics of my dear hus- 
band and his companions. 

" And lastly, I trust it may be in your power to confirm, 
directly or inferentially, the claims of my husband's expe- 
dition to the earliest discovery of the passage, which, if 
Dr. Rae's report be true (and the Government of our 
country has accepted and rewarded it as such), these 
martyrs in a noble cause achieved at their last extremity 



122 LADY FRANKLIN. 

after five long years of labor and suffering, if not an 
earlier period. 

" I am sure you will do all that man can do for the 
attainment of all these objects ; my only fear is that you 
may spend yourselves too much in the effort ; and you 
must therefore let me tell you how much dearer to me 
even than any of them is the preservation of the valuable 
lives of the little band of heroes who are your compan- 
ions and followers. 

" May God in his great mercy preserve you all from 
harm amidst the labors and perils which await you, and 
restore you to us in health and safety, as well as honor ! 
As to ike honor I can have no misgiving. It will be 
yours as much if you fail (since you may fail in spite of 
every effort) as if you succeed; and be assured that, 
under any and all circumstances whatever, such is my 
unbounded confidence in you, you will ever possess and 
be entitled to the enduring gratitude of your sincere 
and attached friend, Jane Franklin." 

The confidence expressed in this letter was not mis- 
placed. Captain M'Clintoek's heart was indeed in the 
work, and his enthusiasm was shared alike by officers 
and crew. It was a bitter disappointment to them all 
when in August their vessel was caught in the ice in 
Melville Bay, and they were obliged to remain in the 
pack, drifting with it when it drifted, until the next spring. 
During this long detention Lady Franklin was often in 
their thoughts, and they spoke sorrowfully of the grief 
she would experience when she learned of the delay. 
The feeling of the crew towards her was described by 
Captain M'Clinteck as " veneration." She was remembered 
on all their holidays, and at their Christmas dinner her 
health and that of Miss Cracroft were drunk with accla- 
mations. It was also unanimously resolved, after the 



LADT FRANKLIN, 123 

killing of the first bear., that its skin should be presented 
to her as a joint gift from the officers and crew, all of 
whom had assisted in the hunt. 

At last the " Pox " escaped from the ice and proceeded 
upon her way. In May, 1859, one of her officers, Lieu- 
tenant Hobson, discovered a cairn containing a record of 
the lost expedition. This record consisted of a note, 
written in 1847, stating their success up to that time, and 
adding that all were well. But around the margin another 
hand, writing a year later, gave a sadly different story. 

From this writer, who was Captain Fitzjames, we learn 
that Sir John Franklin died June eleventh, 184T, and 
that in April of the next year, only two days before the 
date of this record, the " Erebus " and "Terror" were 
abandoned, and their crews landed under the command 
of Captain Crozier. A note in Captain Crozier's hand- 
writing added that they were to start the next day for 
Back's Fish River. 

To this river, accordingly, the searchers of the " Fox " 
proceeded ; and there they found numerous relics of the 
party, including silver articles marked with Sir John 
Franklin's crest, a boat, watches, clothing, and several 
skeletons. The Esquimaux of the region remembered 
the coming of these strangers, and said that all of them 
had perished of cold and hunger ; which was, indeed, but 
too evident. 

u They would fall down and die as they walked along 
the ice," said an old Esquimaux woman to Captain 
M'Clintoek. 

With this news the " Fox " returned to England. Sad 
as the certainty was, it must have been a relief to Lady 
Franklin to receive it. She learned from the earlier of 
the two notes in the cairn, that her husband had attained 
the great object of his expedition ; he had discovered the 
Northwest Passage. From the second note she learned 



124 LADY FRANKLIN. 

that it had been his great good fortune to die on board 
his ship, escaping all the horrors of that terrible overland 
march. Indeed, he died before the expedition had 
experienced anything other than brilliant and striking 
success. 

In 1860, Lady Franklin was presented with a gold 
medal by the Royal Geographical Society. She died in 
1875. The monument erected to her husband in West- 
minster Abbey records, after his exploits and his fate, her 
name, her devotion, the date of her death, and thtf 
inseparable connection of her fame with his. 



MADAME DE MIRAMIOK 

CHARITY is of no age, race, or country. Travelers 
among the most savage tribes find kind and com- 
passionate hearts, and some of the most excellent institu- 
tions of benevolence have been founded in times of the 
grossest corruption of manners and morals. In the worst 
periods there are always some who preserve their integrity, 
and assert by their conduct the dignity of human nature. 

Madame de Miramion, a French lady of rank and 
fortune, born in 1629, passed the whole of her life near 
the showy and licentious court of Louis XIT, and in the 
society of Paris, when that society was most devoted to 
pleasure. But from her childhood she was drawn 
irresistibly to a nobler life, and she spent the greater part 
of her existence in alleviating human anguish, and found- 
ing institutions which have continued the same beneficent 
office ever since. A beauty and an heiress, she turned 
away from the pleasures of her circle at the age when 
they are usually most alluring. At nine years of age the 
death of her mother, a woman devoted to piety and good 
works, saddened her life and made her for a while morbid 
in her feelings. In the midst of a gay and brilliant circle 
of relations and friends, the child was moody, sorrowful, 
and averse to society. 

" I think constantly of death," she said one day to her 
governess, " and ask myself, should I like to die ? should 
I like to die at this moment ? " 

The governess encouraged these feelings, and dissuaded 

125 



126 MADAME DE MIRAMION. 

the child from indulging in the sports proper to her years, 
telling her of eminent saints who denied themselves all 
pleasures, and even inflicted pain upon themselves by 
wearing hair shirts and girdles of iron. She saved her 
money, bought secretly a thick iron chain, and wore it 
around her waist next her skin, whenever she thought she 
might be in danger of becoming too much interested in 
pleasure. This was, indeed, a common practice in France 
two hundred years ago. Like Florence Nightingale, she 
had, even in her childhood, a remarkable love of nursing 
and amusing the sick. In a large household, such as the 
one of w r hich she was a part, there are always some 
invalids, and it was her delight, during her play hours, to 
steal away to their bedrooms to entertain them by read- 
ing, and assist in taking care of them. She would even 
glide from the ball-room on festive occasions to visit a 
sick servant, happier to mitigate suffering than to enjoy 
pleasure. 

When she was fourteen her father died, leaving her, an 
orphan and an heiress, to the care of an ambitious aunt, 
whose only thought concerning her was to secure her a 
brilliant match and see her distinguished in society. The 
young lady had no such thoughts. Grief-stricken at the 
loss of her father, and weaned from fashionable pleasure 
still more by that event, she would have entered a con- 
vent, if she had not felt that she must be a mother to her 
younger brothers. For their sakes th3 continued in the 
world. Her aunt, to dispel what she deemed the gloomy 
thoughts of an unformed girl, endeavored to distract her 
mind by causing her to be presented at court, by taking 
her often to the theatre, and making parties for her 
entertainment. She succeeded for a time, and the young 
lady gave herself up to the enjoyments provided for her. 

She had grown, meanwhile, into a beauty. Her figure 
was tall, finely formed, and exceedingly graceful ; and her 



MADAME DE MIRAMION. 127 

face, of a noble loveliness, with a complexion of dazzling 
purity and eyes of heavenly blue, was set off by a great 
abundance of nut-brown ringlets, which fell down about 
her shoulders and neck. But the great charm of her 
countenance was an expression of mingled love and 
benevolence, such as usually, though not always, marks 
the features of those who naturally delight in doing good. 
Among the young ladies of her time there was none more 
beautiful than she, and to her charms of face and form 
was added the attraction of broad estates and fair 
chateaux, allher own. 

As she again showed symptoms of discontent with a 
life of pleasure, even recurring occasionally to the iron 
chain, her aunt urged her to signify a preference for one 
of the numerous eligible lovers who had been flitting 
round her ever since her entrance into society. One of 
them, it seems, had attracted her regard. It was M. de 
Miramion, who, as she had observed at church and else- 
where, was particularly attentive to his mother, which 
led her to believe he was a worthy young man, who 
would sympathize with her desire to hold aloof from 
the frivolous life of her class. He was rich, and of noble 
rank, well looking, and in love with the beautiful Mad- 
emoiselle de Ru belle. They were married — he twenty- 
seven, sated with the pleasures of the world ; she sixteen, 
superior to them. All went happily for a few months. 

" I gave up playing cards," she wrote, " and going to 
balls and theaters, which caused great surprise. I began 
a regular life ; I won over my husband, and persuaded him 
to live like a good Christian. We were very much united, 
and much beloved by our family, with whom we never 
had any disagreement, except from their efforts to make 
me amuse myself." 

This harmonious married life was rudely terminated, 
at the end of six months, by the death of the husband, 
after an illness of a week. At seventeen Madame de 



128 MADAME DE MIRAMION. 

Miramion was a widow, and about to be a mother. The 
blow was so sudden and severe that nothing, perhaps, 
would have availed to recall her to an interest in mun- 
dane affairs but the birth of her daughter. When she 
reappeared in the great world, she was lovelier than ever 
in her face and person, and her fortune had been increased 
by her portion of her husband's estate. She was a very 
rich and beautiful widow of eighteen, with only the 
incumbrance of an infant in arms. Lovers again sur- 
rounded her, but she encouraged none of them; and, 
indeed, she was firmly resolved to dedicate her life to 
the education of her daughter. Among her suitors was 
a rouS of high rank and wasted fortune — a widower with 
three daughters, who felt how advantageous it would be 
to add the lady's estate to his own. Rejected by her, he 
was given to understand by a friend of the family that 
she really liked him, and was only prevented from marry- 
ing him by the fear of offending her relations. This was 
false, but he believed it, and he determined to carry her 
off in the style of an old-fashioned romance. 

On a certain day, as the young widow and her mother- 
in-law were going in a carriage to a church near Paris, 
the vehicle was suddenly surrounded by a band of horse- 
men wearing masks. They stopped the carriage and 
opened the door. The young lady screamed with terror, 
which the horsemen attributed to her desire to keep up 
appearances before her mother-in-law, and therefore pro- 
ceeded to execute their purpose. The old lady and one 
servant were left in the road to make their way home as 
best they could, while the carriage containing the prize 
was driven rapidly away, surrounded by the gentlemen on 
horseback, led by the lover. All day the party galloped 
on until, at the close of the afternoon, they reached an 
ancient castle, with wall, moat, and draw-bridges, as we 
find them in the novels of the period. Here a party of 
two hundred of the abductor's friends were in waiting 



MADAME DE MIRAMION. 



129 



all armed, and all possessed with the idea that the abduc- 
tion was undertaken with the full and free consent of the 
lady. She soon undeceived them. She utterly refused to 
enter the castle or leave the carriage. At length one of 
the gentlemen, a knight of a religious order, gave her his 
word of honor that if she would alight and remain in the 
castle for the night, she should be set free at daybreak, 
and conveyed in safety to her friends. She then con- 
sented to accept the shelter proffered her. She passed 
the night in solitude, and in the morning was replaced in 
her carriage and set free. 

Such was the state of the law at that time in France, 
and such the power of the nobility, that the perpetrators 
of this outrage escaped punishment, and people generally 
seem to have thought it a gallant and high-spirited adven- 
ture, and one that ought to have been rewarded with 
success. 

From this time to the end of her life, Madame de 
Miramion thought no more of lovers. After recovering 
from the serious illness caused by that day and night of 
terror, she entered upon the way of life which has caused 
her name to be remembered with honor and affection for 
two centuries. She became austerely religious. She 
economized her large income, so as to have the largest 
possible sum to expend in works and institutions of 
charity — discarding all the gay costumes and decora- 
tions of her sex, and wearing always a plain, peculiar 
dress, like that of a religious order. She personally 
superintended her affairs, and showed a particular talent 
for business, making the most of all her sources of 
income. The education of her daughter was her own 
work, and so successful was she with her, that when she 
was married at fifteen, she was regarded and treated as 
a mature woman, and proved worthy of the confidence 
reposed in her. 



I30 MADAME DE MIRAMION. 

Madame de Miramion was the first lady in Europe who 
ever tried systematically to reclaim the fallen of her own 
sex. She hired a spacious house in Paris, into which she 
received those who wished to reform, and there she main- 
tained and taught them, and for such as persisted in 
leading an honest life, she procured places or husbands. 
Other ladies of rank joined her the King assisted, and 
the establishment continues its benevolent work to the 
present day. She also founded a dispensary, which not 
only supplied the poor with medicines, but instructed a 
number of women in the art of preparing them, and in 
the making of salves and plasters. An excellent institu- 
tion founded by her was an industrial school for young 
girls, where they were taught sewing, household arts, 
reading, writing, and the catechism, all the pupils being 
furnished every day with a good plain dinner. In all 
these establishments, Madame de Miramion labored with 
her own hands and head, setting an example of devotion 
and skill to all who assisted her. Her singular aptitude 
for managing business, and her knowledge of finance, 
stood her in good stead. During one of those times of 
famine which used to desolate France, she hit upon the 
expedient of selling a piece of bread and a certain 
quantity of soup at cost, or a little below cost, by which 
many thousands were carried over the period of scarcity 
who would not have been reached by charity. 

She spent her life in labors like these, devoting herself 
and all she possessed to the mitigation of human woe, 
reserving literally nothing for her own enjoyment. It 
was she who gave that impulse to works of charity which 
has rendered Paris the city of Europe most abounding in 
organizations for the alleviation of poverty and pain. 
She died in 1694. Recently her memoirs have been 
published in Paris by a member of her family, and the 
work, I hope, will find its way, through a translation, to 
readers in America. 



PEG O'NEAL. 

SIXTY years ago, there used to be in Washington a 
spacious tavern in the old-fashioned Southern style, 
kept by William O'Neal, who had lived in the neighbor- 
hood before the capital was built on the shores of the 
Potomac. This landlord had a pretty daughter named 
Peg, who was the pet of the house from babyhood to 
womanhood. She was somewhat free and easy in her 
manners, as girls are apt to be who grow up in such cir- 
cumstances ; and it did not immediately occur to her that 
a young lady of twenty cannot behave with quite the free- 
dom of a girl of twelve, without exciting ill-natured 
remark. 

Among the boarders of this old tavern, whenever he 
came to Washington, was General Andrew Jackson, of 
Tennessee, who had known the landlord in the olden time 
when he used to pass through that region on his way from 
Nashville to his seat in Congress at Philadelphia. Mrs. 
Jackson, also, occasionally accompanied the general to 
the seat of government, where she became warmly 
attached both to Mrs. O'Neal and to her daughter, Peg. 
The general nowhere in Washington felt himself so much 
at home as in this old tavern. No one could make him 
and his plain, fat little wife so comfortable as Mrs. O'Neal, 
and no one could fill the general's corn-cob pipe more 
acceptably than the lively and beautiful Peg. 

In due time, Peg O'Neal, as she was universally called, 
became the wife of a purser in the navy, named Timber- 

131 



132 PEG O'NEAL. 

lake, who, while on duty in the Mediterranean, committed 
suicide, in consequence, it was supposed, of a drunken 
debauch on shore. He left his widow with two children 
and little fortune, but still young and beautiful. 

Early in 1829, Senator Eaton of Tennessee, one of 
General Jackson's most intimate friends and political 
allies (an old boarder, too, at the O'Neal tavern), was 
disposed to marry the widow ; but, before doing so, con- 
sulted General Jackson. 

" Why, yes, Major," replied the general, " if you love 
the woman, and she will have you, marry her by all 
means." 

Major Eaton observed that the young widow had not 
escaped reproach, and that even himself was supposed to 
have been too fond of her. 

u Well," said the general, " your marrying her will dis- 
prove these charges, and restore Peg's good name." 

They were married in January, 1829 ; and a few weeks 
after, General Jackson was inaugurated President of the 
United States. In forming his cabinet, the President 
assigned the Department of War to his old friend and 
neighbor, Major Eaton. This appointment suddenly 
invested his wife with social importance. Extravagant 
stories circulated in Washington respecting Mrs. Eaton, 
and the ladies made up their minds with one accord that 
they would not call upon her, nor in any way recognize 
her existence as the wife of a cabinet minister. 

Meanwhile, General Jackson remained in ignorance of 
this new outbreak of scandal ; but before he had been a 
month at the White House a distinguished clergyman of 
Philadelphia, Dr. Ely, wrote him a long letter detailing 
the slander at great length, and calling upon him to 
repudiate Mrs. Eaton. General Jackson had his faults, 
but he never did a mean thing nor a cowardly thing in 
his life. The manner in which he set about defending the 



PEG O'NEAL. r 33 

daughter of his old friend, and his wife's old friend, does 
him as much honor as one of his campaigns. He replied 
to Dr. Ely in a letter of several sheets, in which he exam- 
ined the stories with something of the coolness of an old 
lawyer, and very much of the warmth of a friend. One 
of the charges was that the deceased Timberlake believed 
all this scandal, and cherished deep resentment against 
Eaton. The general met this in a triumphant manner : 

" How can such a tale be reconciled with the following 
facts ? While now writing, I turn my eyes to the mantel- 
piece, where I behold a present sent me by Mr. Timber- 
lake of a Turkish pipe, about three weeks before his death, 
and presented through Mr. Eaton, whom in his letter he 
calls his friend" 

In a similar way he refuted the other accusations, and 
he kept up the defence in letter after letter, with the same 
energy and fire that he had displayed in hurling the Eng- 
lish troops back from New Orleans. I have had in my 
hands hundreds of pages of manuscript in General Jack- 
eon's writing, or caused to be written by him, all relating 
to this affair, and all produced in the early weeks of a 
new administration. He brought it before his cabinet. 
He summoned the chief propagator of the scandals ; he 
moved heaven and earth. But, for once in his life, the 
general was completely baffled ; the ladies would not call 
upon Mrs. Eaton ; not even the general's niece, Mrs. 
Donelson, the mistress of the White House. 

" Any thing else, uncle," she said, " I will do for you, 
but I will not call upon Mrs. Eaton." 

The general was so indignant that he advised her to go 
back to Tennessee ; and she went back, she and her 
husband, private secretary to the President. General 
Jackson's will was strong, but he discovered on this occa- 
sion that woman's won't was stronger. 

In the midst of this controversy, when the feelings of 



134 



PEG O'NEAL. 



the general were exasperated to the highest pitch, there 
arrived in Washington Martin Van Buren to assume the 
office of Secretary of State. Mr. Van Buren, beside 
being one of the most good-natured of men, and a worthy 
gentleman in all respects (to whom justice has not been 
done), had no ladies in his family. He was a widower 
without daughters. He was also the friend and close ally 
of Major Eaton. Soon after his arrival in Washington, 
he called upon Mrs. Eaton as a matter of course, but 
treated her with particular respect as a victim of calumny. 
He did a great deal more than this. He used the whole 
influence of his position as Secretary of State to set her 
right before the world. 

Among the diplomatic corps, it chanced that the British 
Minister Mr. Vaughan, and the Russian Minister Baron 
Krudener were both bachelors, and Mr. Van Buren easily 
enlisted them in the cause. Balls were given by them at 
which they treated the lady with the most marked atten- 
tion, and contrived various expedients to get the other 
ladies into positions where they would be compelled to 
speak civilly to her. All was in vain. The ladies held 
their ground with undaunted pertinacity, yielding neither 
to the President's wrath nor to the Secretary's devices. 

The nickname given to Mrs. Eaton by the hostile faction 
was Bellona, the goddess of war. A letter-writer of the 
day sent to one of the New York papers amusing accounts 
of the gallant efforts of the three old bachelors to " keep 
Bellona afloat " in the society of the capital. 

" A ball and supper," he says, " were got up by his 
excellency, the British Minister, Mr. Vaughan, a parties 
lar friend of Mr. Van Buren. After various stratagems 
to keep Bellona afloat during the evening, in which almost 
every cotillion in which She made her appearance was 
instantly dissolved into its original elements, she was at 
length conducted by the British Minister to the head of 



PEG O'NEAL. 135 

the table, where, in pursuance of that instinctive power 
of inattention to whatever it seems improper to notice 
the ladies seemed not to know that she was at the table. 
This ball and supper were followed by another given by the 
Russian Minister. To guard against the repetition of the 
spontaneous dissolution of the cotillions and the neglect 
of the ladies at supper (where you must observe, none 
but ladies had seats), Mr. Van Buren made a direct and 
earnest appeal to the lady of the Minister from Holland, 
Mrs. Huygens, whom he entreated to consent to be intro- 
duced to the accomplished and lovely Mrs. Eaton. 

" The ball scene arrived, and Mrs. Huygens, with uncom- 
mon dignity, maintained her ground, avoiding the 
advances of Bellona and her associates until supper was 
announced, when Mrs. Huygens was informed by Baron 
Krudener that Mr. Eaton would conduct her to the table. 
She declined and remonstrated, but in the meantime Mr. 
Eaton advanced to offer his arm. She at first objected, 
but to relieve him from his embarrassment walked with 
him to the table, where she found Mrs. Eaton seated at 
the head, beside an empty chair for herself. Mrs. 
Huygens had no alternative but to become an instrument 
to the intrigue, or decline taking supper ; she chose the 
latter, and taking hold of her husband's arm withdrew 
from the room. This was the offence for which General 
Jackson afterwards threatened to send her husband home. 

" The next scene in the drama was a grand dinner, given 
in the east room of the palace where it was arranged that 
Mr. Vaughan was to conduct Mrs. Eaton to the table and 
place her at the side of the President, who took care by 
his marked attention to admonish all present (about 
eighty, including the principal officers of the government 
and their ladies) that Mrs. Eaton was one of his favorites, 
and that he expected her to be treated as such in all 
places. Dinner being over the company retired to the 



I3 6 PEG O'NEAL. 

coffee room to indulge in the exhilarating conversation 
which wine and good company usually excite. But all 
would not do.. Nothing would move the inflexible ladies." 

Mr. Van Buren's conduct completely won the affection 
of General Jackson, of which during the summer of 1830 
he gave a most extraordinary proof. Being exceedingly 
sick, and not expected to live through his first term, he 
wrote a letter strongly recommending Mr. Van Buren as 
his successor to the presidency, and denouncing his rival, 
Calhoun, as signally unfit for the position. The letter 
was confided to the custody of Major William B. Lewis, 
of Nashville, who permitted me to copy it in 1858 for use 
in my Life of Jackson. It had lain in a green box, with 
other private documents of a similar nature, for twenty- 
eight years; for, as the general in part recovered his 
health, it was never used for the purpose intended. Not 
the less, however, did General Jackson, by a long series 
of skillful maneuvres, secure for Mr. Van Buren the 
succession to the presidency. 

Finding the ladies resolute, and being himself consti- 
tutionally unable to give up, General Jackson broke up 
his cabinet, quarreled with Calhoun, drove him into nulli- 
fication, sent Van Buren abroad as Minister to England, 
and, in short, changed the course of events in the United 
States for half a century; all because the Washington 
ladies would not call upon Mrs. Eaton. Some time after 
the close of the Jackson administration Mrs. Eaton was 
again left a widow ; but this time, she was left a rich 
widow. For many years she lived in Washington in very 
elegant style, in a house all alive and merry with children 
and grandchildren. In her old age she was so unfor- 
tunate as to marry a young Italian dancing-master, who 
squandered her fortune, and brought her gray hairs in 
poverty and sorrow to the grave. She died in Washing* 
ton a few years ago, aged about eighty-four years. 



PEG O'NEAL. 



137 



Was General Jackson right in carrying his defence of 
Mrs. Eaton to this extreme ? We may say of General 
Jackson that he often did a right thing in a wrong way. 
If he did not succeed* in making the ladies call upon Mrs. 
Eaton, he gave the politics of the country a turn which, 
upon the whole, was beneficial. 
9 



MRS. L. K MONMOUTH, AND HOW SHE LIVED ON 
FORTY DOLLARS A YEAR. 

HERE is a true tale of a lady, still living among us, 
who rescued her home, her life, her happiness, and 
her dignity as a gentlewoman, from an abyss of circum- 
stances that threatened to engulf them all. She is that 
Mrs. L. H. Monmouth, of Canterbury, New Hampshire, of 
whom the reader may have casually heard, who in mid- 
dle age, half disabled, and an invalid, suddenly lost her 
fortune. She had been living in comfort and apparent 
security in the receipt of a modest, but sufficient income, 
much of which she spent in charity. She awoke one 
morning and found herself without a dollar — every- 
thing gone but the old homestead that sheltered her. 

Too ill to work, afflicted with a crippled arm and one 
blind eye, and dazed by the suddenness of her misfor- 
tune, she was at her wits' end to know what to do. In 
this emergency, friends were not backward in offering 
their advice. 

"Take boarders," said one. 

" Sell your place and buy a cottage," said another. 

"Let it, and hire your board," said a third. 

Others, perhaps as well-meaning, but even less prac- 
tical, counseled her to be resigned, to rely on Providence, 
to trust and pray. A few added the vague though kindly 
phrase : 

" When you want anything, be sure and let us know." 

If these various suggestions were of any assistance to 
Mrs. Monmouth in her trouble, it was only in showing 

138 



MRS. L. N. MONMOUTH. 1 39 

her that she must think and act for herself. Take board- 
ers she would not, on account of her health. Her house, 
if she sold it, would not bring more than six hundred 
dollars, a sum too small for the purchase of a cottage, 
and which, if used for paying board, would soon have 
slipped away and left her dependent upon charity. 

The house was old, dreary, and dilapidated. "The 
roofs leaked," she says, "the windows were rickety, 
the chimney discharged a mournful brickbat in every 
driving storm." But it was a shelter; it was dear to 
her ; and she resolved to keep it. The land upon which 
it stood yielded twenty dollars a year in hay, twelve for 
pasture, and in good years three for apples. By knitting 
and making artificial flowers, the only work she was able 
to do, she could depend upon earning fifteen dollars more. 
These sums together equaled an income of exactly fifty 
dollars, ten of which would be required for taxes. Upon 
the remaining forty she determined to live, and did 
live. 

She did not enter upon this desperate experiment with- 
out serious misgivings. Her first thought was to assign 
twenty dollars out of the precious forty for food, but this 
sum she soon reduced to seventeen. Better starve the 
body than the mind, she thought, and the three dollars 
thus saved were used to continue her subscription to hei 
favorite weekly newspaper. She did better even than 
this ; for in her final apportionment of expenditures we 
find ten dollars — one-quarter of her whole income exclu- 
sive of taxes — set apart for the purchase of reading mat- 
ter ; the only other item in the list, besides food, being 
thirteen dollars for fuel. 

Not a single penny did she devote to dress, and the 
ingenious shifts by which she succeeded in clothing her- 
self respectably and sufficiently upon nothing a year, for 
three years, are worthy of study, and cannot fail to excite 



I40 MRS. L. N. MONMOUTH. 

admiration. Her wardrobe, at the time of her loss of 
fortune, contained but one suit in really good condition, 
and but one outer garment of any kind, a waterproof 
cloak much worn and defaced. But she possessed a 
palm-figured dressing-gown lined with purple flannel, the 
outside of which was soiled and torn, while the lining 
was still quite good. This she ripped to pieces, and, 
after washing and ironing the flannel, made a new gown 
from it which she trimmed with the palm-leaf figures cut 
from the sound parts of the other material, and placed in 
three bands round the skirt and sleeves. She then 
raveled out an old red undersleeve and edged each 
band with a narrow fluting made from the worsted thus 
obtained. 

" I took genuine comfort," she tells us, " in planning 
and piecing it out, day after day, with half-mittens on my 
cold hands, sitting close to a cold fire. I was more than 
a week about it, for owing to shortness of firewood my 
days were very short, and my lame hand was decrepit 
and painful. I recollected that when I had made this 
wrapper out of an abundance of nice new materials I had 
been quite impatient at having to sew on it for two days, 
and called in help to finish it off. People who saw it 
after it was remodeled said it was handsomer than when 
it was new, and it is certain I thought a good deal more 
of it" 

Even a Yankee woman might well be proud of such a 
triumph ; but it was by no means the greatest which this 
undaunted lady achieved. She had now two dresses, but 
an outside garment was necessary, since the waterproof 
was quite unpresentable. In an outer room of the house 
hung an old, rusty overcoat of her father. It had been 
there undisturbed for fifteen years, in company with a 
pair of big boots, partly through an affectionate liking of 
hers to see it around, partly as a wholesome suggestion 



MRS. L. N. MONMOUTH. I4I 

to tramps of a possible masculine protector. It was 
destined now to resume a more active career of useful- 
ness. With great difficulty Mrs. Monmouth lifted it from 
its peg and dragged it to her room to examine at her 
ease. 

It proved a mine of wealth to her. The lining alone, 
of the finest and glossiest black lasting, quilted in dia- 
monds, was a great treasure ; then, when this had been 
ripped away, the reverse side of the coat itself was 
revealed to be dark gray, clean, whole, and as good as 
new. 

With this gray cloth cut in strips, the old waterproof 
newly washed, pressed, and mended, was so trimmed and 
pieced as to make a very respectable garment for winter 
service. Better still, the same stuff — a kind of fulled 
cloth — was so thick, warm, and pliable that Mrs. Mon- 
mouth, after having ripped up an old shoe for a pattern, 
was enabled to make herself an excellent pair of shoes 
out of it, comfortable, neatly fitting, and not unsightly. 

"These home made shoes," she says with pardonable 
pride, " shut off the shoe bill at the store, and gave me 
Harper's Magazine" 

But let us not forget the quilted lining. From this, 
long, shining, and almost exactly of the fashionable 
shape, a cloak was made which, when lined and trimmed 
with a few odds and ends of cashmere, proved so hand- 
some and at a little distance so like satin, that its skillful 
and modest owner dared not wear it much abroad, for 
fear of being accused of wild extravagance. It was 
reserved to put on in the house on very cold days, and on 
Thanksgivings, " to give thanks in." 

From some plaid black and white flannel which had 
lined the waterproof before its renovation, another cloak 
was made, less elegant, but still, when decorated with 
pressed gros-grain ribbon, and a fluting and ball-fringe 



142 MRS. L. N. MONMOUTH. 

made from a pair of raveled stockings, it was an article 
of apparel by no means to be despised. This served for 
use in spring and fall. 

The problem of shoes had been mainly solved by the 
discovery of the old overcoat, although, to spare any 
unnecessary use of objects so difficult to manufacture, the 
soles of old rubbers, lined with flannel and laced sandal- 
wise upon the feet, often answered for household wear. 
The problem of stockings remained. It was finally solved 
by means of a knitted shawl and some ancient homespun 
underclothes, all of which had been long since cast aside. 
They were a mass of ends and ravel ings, but the yarn, 
though torn and in a few places moth-eaten, was other- 
wise quite sound and very strong. This was carefully 
washed, wound into skeins, colored, rinsed, and rewound 
into balls for knitting — a labor of weeks. When it was 
completed Mrs. Monmouth found herself supplied with 
sufficient material to afford stockings for a lifetime. 

Her summer clothing gave less trouble than the heavier 
garments required for winter. She was fortunate enough 
to find an old chocolate and white print gown of her 
mother's, which merely demanded altering over. A 
second dress — a very pretty one — was made from a bed- 
ticking, and trimmed with blue drilling taken from a pair 
of overalls left on the place by some careless workman, 
years before. A pair of checkered table-cloths were held 
in reserve to be used should occasion require. Linen 
articles were supplied from fifteen mottoes, worked upon 
muslin and cotton flannel, that the house contained. 
These were soaked and boiled clean before being used. 
Hats and bonnets were deemed superfluous. When, how- 
ever, it was necessary to pass the limits of the little farm 
and appear in public, a battered straw ruin from the attic 
fulfilled the demands of propriety, its forlorn condition 
being concealed beneath the folds of a bargge veil. 



MRS. L. N. MONMOUTH. 1 43 

In the matter of food Mrs. Monmouth relied much upon 
corn meal. Four and a half cents would support her 
very well for a day and a half ; one cent for a quarter of 
a pound of meal, one and a half for a quarter of a pound 
of dried beans, and two for a bit of salt pork. This was 
her customary bill of fare for three days out of the seven 
Rice she made great use of, and a pound of oatmeal 
cooked on Monday served as a dessert throughout the 
w r eek, a cup of molasses taking the place of sauce. 
Occasionally, when they were at their cheapest, she 
bought several eggs ; at rare intervals she even indulged 
herself with a beet, a turnip, or a few cents worth of 
butcher's scraps. Once a month she luxuriated in baking 
gingerbread or frying doughnuts, one at a time, over her 
little oil stove. 

" I always enjoyed the frying of doughnuts," she says, 
" and looked forward to it with a zest of anticipation ; 
they generally came up plump and round, and quite filled 
the little cup of boiling lard. I picked them out with & 
fork and invariably ate the first while the second was 
cooking. After that I let them congregate upon a plate, 
and watched their numbers increase to five, six, seven — 
never more than that." 

Now and then she was haunted by visions of the savory 
cakes and pies baking in her neighbors' ovens ; but when- 
ever the contrast became too strong between these fancied 
delicacies and the lonely pot of oatmeal in her own 
cupboard, she hastened to forget her deprivations in a 
book. 

Her usual provision of winter fuel was three cords of 
wood, which she sawed herself, despite her lame arm, 
" worrying off," as she expresses it, " a few sticks each 
day " During the milder seasons of the year she burned 
only such dried moss, branches, and pine cones as she 
could gather in the neighborhood. For almost all cooking 



144 MRS. L. N. MONMOUTH. 

she used an oil stove. Her lame arm, which was easily 
affected by the weather, became almost useless during 
periods of intense cold. At these times, feeling that 
when nothing could be earned something might at least 
be saved, she would spare her fuel by creeping into bed 
with a book and a hot freestone, and spend the day 
beneath the clothes. 

She had no money to spare for incidental expenses. 
When the roof of her shed let in too much rain upon the 
wood-pile, the wood-pile was moved to a drier spot. When 
a front window was ruined by some reckless sportsman 
putting thirty shot holes through it, the blinds were closed 
and it was left unmended. When the plaster dropped 
down into the rooms its place was supplied by patches of 
cloth pasted over the bare brown laths. Yet, while her 
poverty reduced her to such makeshifts as these, while 
she denied herself even the' lotion which would alleviate 
the condition of her crippled arm, Mrs. Monmouth always 
managed to keep a dollar or two on hand for charitable 
purposes, and never failed to manufacture some simple 
Christmas presents for a few children and faithful friends 
who were accustomed to bring her occasionally during the 
year what she gratefully terms " baskets of benefaction." 

She succeeded, moreover, in finding time and strength 
to render pleasing and attractive the old home which she 
could not afford to repair, and which became, in the 
course of a few years, a veritable museum of ingenious 
and beautiful handiwork. At last the people around her 
became interested ; the place began to be talked of, and 
its fame spread into the neighboring towns. Visitors 
arrived, few at first, and later in such numbers that Mrs. 
Monmouth was obliged to charge an admittance fee, and 
afterwards to issue a circular containing prices and 
regulations. 

"Children, seven cents; Ladies, ten; Gentlemen, fif- 



MRS. L. N. MONMOUTH. I_4S 

teen ; " says this interesting little document, adding that 
" No gentlemen unaccompanied by ladies will be admitted, 
and strangers must bring an introduction." 

It also states, very prudently, that "Ladies are 
requested not to come with horses they cannot manage. 
Such as wish to remain most of the day can do so by 
bringing lunch and paying twenty-five cents." 

Besides her other labors, Mrs. Monmouth has written 
a small pamphlet relating her experiences, which she 
entitles, " Living on Half a Dime a Day." 

Let no one undervalue these trifling details, for they 
convey to this extravagant age a lesson of which it 
stands in need. Some of the brightest spirits of our time 
have passed or are passing their lives in miserable bond- 
age, solely through disregard of Mrs. Monmouth's princi- 
ple of preserving her independence by living within her 
means. An English poet of great celebrity has a costly 
mansion unfinished, which has for years made him a 
bond-slave to publishers and architects. 

The French novelist, Balzac, as we see by his Letters, 
spent his life in a mere struggle to pay off enormous 
debts incurred in building, improving, and furnishing. 
He was a man of almost unequaled strength of constitu- 
tion, one who could work sixteen hours a day, for months 
at a time, without obvious exhaustion ; but it killed him 
at last. The disease of which he died was called con- 
sumption, but its correct name was House and Grounds ; 
and he seemed quite helpless in the clutch of this dread 
malady. When he began to write he used to receive for 
a small volume one hundred and twenty dollars, and he 
endeavored to write one of these every month. In the 
course of a year or two his price rose to four hundred 
dollars for a volume, which would have yielded him a 
tolerable income without excessive labor. But now, 
presuming upon his strength and ability, he began to get 



I46 MRS. L. N. MONMOUTH. 

into debt, and, in six years, he owed twenty-five thousand 
dollars. From that time to the end of his life, he was 
possessed of two raging manias — a mania to get into 
debt, and a mania to work out of debt. But it is so easy 
to spend ! He sometimes received five thousand dollars 
a month for literary labor, and sold one story to a news- 
paper for four thousand dollars. Rising from his bed at 
midnight, he kept at work all the rest of the night, and 
most of the next day, till five in the afternoon ; but his 
debts grew apace and speedily reached a total of fifty 
thousand dollars. 

Then, of course, he must needs buy a house and set 
about improving its garden. He appears not to have 
known what was the matter. He wondered that he 
should be so pestered with debts. " Why am I in debt ? " 
he asks. He died insolvent, after making millions by his 
pen, and at the very moment almost of his death he was 
buying an antique costume for thirty thousand francs, 
and concluding bargains for pictures and ancient needle- 
work. 

There is an interesting passage in the memoirs of 
George Ticknor, where he speaks of his two visits to 
Abbotsford, the big house that brought low the magnifi- 
cent head of Sir Walter Scott. When Mr. Ticknor 
first visited the author of " Marmion," his abode was a 
modest, comfortable establishment, quite sufficient for a 
reasonable family of liberal income. When he paid his 
second visit, Sir Walter having in the interval made and 
lost a great fortune, Abbotsford had grown into a costly, 
extensive, nondescript, preposterous mansion. The 
moment his eyes fell upon it he understood Sir Walter's 
ruin. That toy house was his ruin. The American 
visitor discovered among its grandeurs the apartment he 
had occupied twenty years before, reduced in rank and 
office, but still recognizable, and he could not but lament 



MRS. L. N. MONMOUTH. 147 

the fatal mania which had lured so great a man to spoil a 
modest country house by incrusting it over with an eccen- 
tric, tawdry palace. 

A leaf from Mrs. Monmouth's book might have saved 
these men from misery and despair. She made the most 
of small means, and they made the least of large. In the 
midst of poverty she preserved her independence and her 
dignity; with superabundant means, they threw both 
away 



THE TRIAL OF JEANNE DARC, COMMONLY CALLED 
JOAN OF ARC. 

EOME refuses to canonize the Maid of Orleans. At the 
beginning of the year 1876, Monseigneur Dupan- 
loup, bishop of the diocese in which she began her career 
in arms, went to Rome, and asked, on behalf of his 
Catholic countrymen, that the maiden who, four hundred 
and fifty-three years ago, assisted to restore the inde- 
pendence of France, might be added to the roll of the 
saints. The power that sent the golden rose unasked to 
Isabella of Spain refused this costless favor to the urgent 
request of Frenchmen. 

It had no other choice. The Historical Society of 
France has given to the reading world the means of know- 
ing what power it was that consigned her to the fire. It 
was no other than the Church which so recently was 
asked to canonize her. After a five months' trial, in 
which sixty ecclesiastics, and none but ecclesiastics, par- 
ticipated, she was condemned as an "excommunicated 
heretic, a liar, a seducer, pernicious, presumptuous, credu- 
lous, rash, superstitious, a pretender to divination, blas- 
phemous toward God, toward the saints male and the 
saints female, contemptuous of God even in His sacra- 
ments, distorter of the Divine law, of holy doctrine, of 
ecclesiastical sanctions, seditious, cruel, apostate, schis- 
matic." It were much, even after the lapse of four hun- 
dred and fifty years, to forgive such sins as these. 

The proceedings of this long trial were recorded from 

148 



THE TRIAL OF JEANNE DARC. 151 

day to day with a minuteness which only a short-hand 
report could have surpassed, and when the last scene was 
over, the record was translated into official Latin by 
members of the University of Paris. Five copies of this 
translation were made, in the most beautiful writing of 
the period — one for Henry VI, King of England, one 
for the Pope, one for the English cardinal, uncle to Henry 
VI, and one for each of the two presiding ecclesiastics. 
Three of these manuscript copies exist to-day in Paris, 
as well as a considerable portion of the original draft — 
le plumitif, as the French lawyers term it — written in 
the French of 1430. The very copy designed for the boy 
King of England, the ill-starred child of Henry V and 
Catherine of France, has remained at Paris, where its 
presence attests the reality of the Maid's exploits, and 
recalls her prophetic words, uttered often in the hearing 
of the English nobles : " You will not hold the kingdom 
of France. In seven years you will be gone." This 
report, edited with care and learning by M. Jules Qui- 
cherat, has been printed verbatim in five volumes octavo, 
and these have been since reduced to two volumes by the 
omission of repetitions, under the zealous editorship of 
Mr. E. Reilly, a distinguished lawyer of Rouen, where the 
trial took place. The record is therefore ineffaceable. 
The Church could not canonize in 1876 a personage whom 
the Church is known to have cast beyond her pale in 1430 
to be mercifully burned alive. She was abandoned to 
"the secular arm," which was besought to act toward 
her with sweetness — avee douceur. In thirty minutes 
the secular arm bound her to a stake in the market- 
place of Rouen, and sweetly wreathed about her virgin 
form a shroud of flame. 

France no longer possesses Domremy, the remote and 
obscure hamlet of Lorraine where the Maid first saw the 
light. The house in which she was born, the little church 



152 THE TRIAL OF JEANNE DARC. 

of St. Remi in which she knelt; and the church-yard 
wall against which her abode was built, are all standing. 
The village is commonly called Domremy-la-Pucelle, in 
remembrance of her, and every object in the neighborhood 
speaks of her: the river Meuse gliding past, the hill of 
the fairies upon which her companions danced, and where 
they laughed at her for liking better to go to church, the 
fountain where the sick were healed by miracle, and the 
meadows in which she sat spinning while she watched the 
village herd on the days when it was her father's turn to 
have it in charge. These remain little changed ; but 
they are now part of the German Empire — part of the 
price France has had in our time to pay for Louis XIV 
and the Bonapartes. To such a people as the French it is 
not a thing of trifling import that France does not own 
the birthplace of the Maid of Orleans. 

Nor was Lorraine a French possession when Jeanne 
Dare kept the village herd on the banks of the Meuse 
in 1425. For a long period it had been a border-land 
between France and the empire, during which the inhabit- 
ants of chat sequestered nook had been as passionately 
French in their feelings as the people of Eastern Tennes- 
see were warm for the Union in 1863. In a border-land 
there is no neutrality. And during the childhood of this 
maiden, France had fallen under the dominion of the 
English. She was three or four years of age when Henry 
V won the battle of Agincourt, and by the time she was 
ten, France as an independent power had ceased to be. 
It was not merely that Harry V and his bowmen had 
overthrown in battle the French armies, but, apart from 
this conquest of the country, there were grounds for the 
claim of his son to the French throne which even a patri- 
otic and conscientious Frenchman might have admitted. 
The French King himself, Charles VII, indolently doubted 
the right of his line to the throne, and doubted also his 
own legitimacy. 



THE TRIAL OF JEANNE DARC. 153 

What could a Frenchman think of the rival claimants 
of 1428? Paris was in the power of the English, and 
apparently content to be ; two-thirds of France were 
strongly held by English troops, and the remainder was 
not safe from incursion for a day; the uncles of the 
English King, who ruled France in his name, were men 
of energy and force, capable of holding what their valiant 
brother had won ; and as to the King, Henry VI, boy as 
he was, he was a French Prince as well as English, the 
son of English Harry and the Princess Catherine, whose 
pretty courting scenes so agreeably close Shakspeare's 
play. " Shall not thou and I," says blunt King Hal to 
the Princess, who happily understood him not, " com- 
pound a boy, half French, half English, that shall go to 
Constantinople, and take the Turk by the beard ? " The 
boy had been compounded; he was now called Henry 
VI, of France and England King; and many thousand 
Frenchmen owned him sovereign in their hearts. 

The person whom we commonly style Joan of Arc, 
and the French Jeanne d'Arc, would have written her 
name, if she had ever known how to write, Jehannette 
Rommee. " My mother," she said, upon her trial, " was 
named Romm£e, and in my country girls bear the surname 
of their mothers." Her father was a farm laborer named 
Jacques Dare, originally D'Arc — James of the Bow, or, 
as we might say, if he had been an English peasant, 
James Bowman. A learned descendant of the family — 
for she had several brothers and sisters — who has written 
a book on the Maid, writes her name and his own Dare ; 
and although there is an inclination in France to give her 
still the aristocratic apostrophe, it is probable that history 
will now accept plain Jeanne Dare as the name nearest 
the truth. Whether her father was a free laborer or a 
serf was not known even to the persons who drew up her 
patent of nobility in 1428. and is still uncertain. We 



154 THE TRIAL OF JEANNE DARC. 

know, however, that he was an agricultural laborer, who 
" went to the plow," which plow this daughter may have 
assisted to draw. As I propose, however, to give those 
portions of her testimony in which she relates her own 
story, I will merely recall a few of the circumstances of 
her lot needful to the elucidation of her words. These 
were mostly gathered from the lips of her companions, 
years after her death, when the mother of the Maid of 
Orleans, from whom she probably derived her cast of 
character, cried to France, and cried not in vain, to do 
justice to her daughter's memory. 

The Dare cottage was so near the village church that a 
religious girl residing in it would always feel herself in 
the shadow of the altar. She could look from her home 
into the church's open door. She was familiar with the 
sexton from her childhood, and used to remind him of 
his duty when he forgot to ring the bell for prayers, even 
bribing him to be punctual by gifts of wool and yarn. Of 
knowledge derived from books she possessed none, unless 
we except her Paternoster, her creed, and a few short 
prayers and invocations, she not differing in this par- 
ticular from nine-tenths of the people of the kingdom. 
Probably not one of her race had ever been able to read. 
She was, nevertheless, a person of native superiority of 
mind and character, capable of public spirit, yearning for 
the deliverance of her country, fervid, energetic, of dex- 
terous hand, well skilled in all the arts and industries 
appertaining to her lot, and proud to excel in them. It 
is not true that she was an inn servant, who rode the 
horses to water, and saddled them for travelers. Shf, 
lived honorably in her father's house, earning her share 
of the family's subsistence by honest toil, spinning, weav- 
ing, bread-making, gardening, and field-work, "taking 
her spinning-wheel with her to the fields when it was her 
father's turn to tend the village herd" — a faithful helper 



THE TRIAL OF JEANNE DARC. 155 

to her parents. She was a well-grown girl, robust, strong, 
and vigorous. Of the numerous portraits known to have 
been taken of her during the two years of her glory, I 
know not if any one has been preserved. Probably not ; 
else why do not Martin, Guizot, and the other French 
historians give some authority for the radiant beauty of the 
pictures they present to us of the Maid ? Beautiful she 
probably was. Pitiful and devout we know she was from 
the testimony of all her village, as well as from that of 
her pastors, who heard her in confession, and witnessed 
her life from day to day and from hour to hour. We 
know, also, that her heart was wrung with sorrow for her 
desolated country, and her careless, self-indulgent King, 
whom she ignorantly thought a peerless hero and a 
Christian knight without reproach. 

Such traits as these, subdued by Catholic habits, impart 
to youth and beauty, untutored though it be, an assured 
serenity of demeanor which impresses and charms. By 
Catholic habits I mean such as the habit of remaining 
still and silent in one attitude for a long time, the habit 
of walking at a measured pace with the hands in a pre- 
scribed position, the habit of pausing several times a day 
and collecting the soul in meditation on themes remote 
from the day's toil and trouble. The effect of these 
habits upon the nervous system, and consequently upon 
the demeanor, is such as to give convent schools an 
obvious advantage, which keeps them full of pupils all 
over the world. Granting that the effect is chiefly phys- 
ical, and that it is often overvalued, we must still admit 
that it often confers personal power and personal charm. 

The story of this village maiden is incomprehensi- 
ble, unless we allow her the might and majesty of 
such a presence as we still see in pure-minded and 
nobly purposed women. Many of those who executed 
her will at critical moments could only explain their 



I56 THE TRIAL OF JEANNE DARC. 

obedience by dwelling upon the power of her demeanor, 
which was at once impassioned and serene. Rude men- 
at-arms could not swear in her presence, and the 
nobles of a dissolute court yielded to the force of her 
resolve. They told her that her road to the king was 
infested with enemies. " I do not fear them/' replied 
this peasant girl, not yet eighteen. " If there are enemies 
upon my road, God is there also, and He will know how 
to prepare my way to the Lord Dauphin. I was created 
and put into the world for that f" The Comte de Dunois 
in his old age, twenty-six years after the campaigns in 
which he had fought by her side, bore testimony to the 
commanding power of her words. She said one day to 
the king, in the hearing of Dunois : " When I am 
annoyed because my message from God is not more 
regarded, I go apart and pray to God; I lay my com- 
plaint before Him ; and when my prayer is finished I 
hear a Voice which cries to me, 4 Child of God, go, go ; I 
will be your helper ; go ! ' And when I hear that Voice 
I am glad exceedingly, and I wish to hear it always." 
After repeating these sentences of the Maid, old Dunois 
would add, " And what was more wondrous still, while 
she uttered these words her eyes were raised to heaven 
in a marvelous transport." This Maid, I repeat, is inex- 
plicable, unless we think of her as one of those gifted 
persons who have natural power to sway and to impress. 
She spoke to the king of a Voice that cheered and 
guided her. Usually she used the plural, nies voix. These 
Voices play the decisive part both in her life and death, 
and they furnish also the chief difficulty of her history. 
Most of us moderns have ceased to be able to believe in 
audible or visible supernatural guidance such as she 
claimed to enjoy, and we at once suspect imposture in 
the person who pretends to it. She shall tell her own 
story, and the reader, must judge it according to the light 



THE TRIAL OF JEANNE DARC. 157 

which he possesses. Those who are inclined to set down 
all such pretensions as conscious frauds must not forget 
that Socrates spoke familiarly of his daemon, whose voice 
he thought he heard, and whose behests he prof essed to 
obey from early life to his last hours. They should also 
recall the case of Columbus, who distinctly heard a voice 
in the night bidding him to be of good cheer, and hold- 
ing out hopes of success which were ^fulfilled. Jeanne 
Dare was quick enough to distrust and detect other 
claimants to supernatural visitations. The woman who 
pretended to receive nightly visitations from a Lady in 
White was quickly put to the test. Jeanne Dare resorted 
to the simple expedient of passing two nights with her, 
and when the vision did not appear, told her to go home 
and take care of her husband and children. This Maid 
also gave two proofs of genuineness not to be looked for 
in impostors. In her village home she was noted for her 
skill as well as for her fidelity in the labors belonging to 
her position ; and when she had entered upon her public 
life, she was ever found in the thick of the battle, banner 
in hand, not indeed using her sword, but never shrinking 
from the post where swords were bloodiest. The false 
knaves of this world neither excel in homely duties nor 
lead the van in perilous ones. 

France had never — has never — been so near extirpa* 
tion. "The people," as the historian Martin expresses it, 
" were no longer bathed in their sweat, but ground in 
their blood, debased below the beasts of the forest, among 
which they wander, panic-stricken, mutilated, in quest of 
an asylum in the wilderness." This fervent and sympa- 
thetic girl came at length to see the desolation of her 
country; her own village was laid waste and plundered 
by a marauding band. From childhood she had been 
familiar with the legend, " France, lost through a maid, 
shall by a maid be saved," 



I58 THE TRIAL OF JEANNE DARC. 

The story of her exploits at court, in camp, in the field, 
is tamiliar to all the world. A thousand vulgar fictions 
obscure and degrade its essential truth. What this 
untaught girl did for her country was simply this : she 
brought to bear upon the armies of France the influence 
of what our own Western preachers would call a " power- 
ful revival of religion.'' From bands of reckless and 
dissolute plunderers, she made French soldiers orderly, 
Jecent, moral, and devout. Hope revived. She made 
the king believe in himself ; she made the court believe 
in the cause. Men of faith saw in her the expected vir- 
gin savior : men of understanding perceived the advant- 
age to their side of having her thus regarded. She may, 
too (as some of her warrior comrades testified in later 
years), have really possessed some military talent, as well 
as martial ardor and inspiration. They said of her that 
she had good judgment in placing artillery. Later in 
her short public career she showed herself restless, rash, 
uncontrollable ; she made mistakes ; she incurred dis- 
asters. But for many months, during which France 
regained a place among the powers of Europe, she was a 
glorious presence in the army — a warrior virgin, in bril- 
liant attire, splendidly equipped, superbly mounted, nobly 
attended ; a leader whom all eyes followed with confiding 
admiration, as one who had been their deliverer, and 
was still their chief. The lowliness of her origin was an 
element in her power over a people who worshiped 
every hour a Saviour who was cradled in a manger. We 
can still read over the door of an ancient inn at Rheims, 
~he Maison Rouge, this inscription : " In the year 1429, 
at the coronation of Charles VII, in this tavern, then 
called The Zebra, the father and mother of Jeanne Dare 
lodged, at the expense of the City Council." 

Her career could not but be brief. When she left home 
to deliver her country, she had lived, according to the 



THE TRIAL OF JEANNE DARC. 159 

most recent French authorities, seventeen years and two 
months. Fifteen months later, May 24, 1439, after a 
SQries of important victories followed by minor defeats, 
she was taken prisoner under the walls of CompiSgne, 
which she was attempting to relieve. French troops, 
fighting on the side of the English, captured her and 
held her prisoner. French priests, in the metropolitan 
church of N6tre Dame at Paris, celebrated her capture 
by a " Te Deum." It is doubtful if her own king 
lamented her ; for this devoted, deluded girl belonged to 
the order of mortals whom the powers of this world often 
find it as convenient to be rid of as to use. It is proba- 
ble that she had expended her power to be of service and 
had become unmanageable. Small, needless failures, 
chargeable to her own rash impetuosity, had lessened her 
prestige. For the fair and wanton Agnes Sorel the idle 
King of France would have attempted much ; but he 
made no serious effort to ransom or to rescue the Maid 
to whom he owed his crown and kingdom. 

Politicians are much the same in every age, since the 
work they have to do is much the same in every age. 
Two parties as well as two kings were contending for the 
possession of France, and one of these, by the prompt 
and adroit use of the Maid of Orleans, had gained for 
their side the conquering force of a religious revival. 
Bedford, the regent of the kingdom, who had seen his 
conquests falling away from him before the banner of a 
rustic girl, felt the necessity of depriving his rival of this 
advantage. If there were two powers contending for the 
kingdom of France, were there not two powers contending 
for the kingdom of this world ? Loyal France had accepted 
the Maid as sent from God ; it now devolved upon the 
English regent to demonstrate that she was an agent of 
Satan. He bought her of her captors for ten thousand 
pounds — a vast sum for that period — and had her brought 



IOO THE TRIAL OF JEANNE DARC. 

to R>>nen, a chief seat of the English power, where to this 
day the bones of the regent lie magnificently entombed 
in the cathedral. There he caused a trial to be arranged, 
of a character so imposing as to command the attention 
of Europe. No homage rendered her by her adherents 
conveys to us such a sense of her importance as this trial 
contrived by an able ruler to neutralize her influence. 

A politician who had the bestowal of church prefer- 
ments could as easily find ecclesiastics to execute his will 
as a politician, who has only trivial, precarious offices to 
give, can pack a convention and control a caucus. Bed- 
ford's written promise of the archbishopric of Rouen 
made Cauchon, Bishop of Beauvais, his superserviceable 
agent, through whom all that was most imposing and 
authoritative in the Church convened at Rouen to try the 
Maid. Bishops, abb£s, priors, six representatives of the 
University of Paris, the chief officer of the Inquisition, 
learned doctors, noted priests — in a word, sixty of the 
Slite of the Church in English France, all of them French- 
men — assisted at the trial. 

The castle at Rouen, a vast and impregnable edifice 
in the style of the period, was the scene of these transac- 
tions. The great tower is still in good preservation; 
the rest of the structure has disappeared. This gloomy- 
looking extensive edifice, Jeanne Dare's prison and court* 
house, was the centre of interest to two kingdoms 
during her half year's detention. It swarmed with in- 
habitants. As if to nullify the Maid's effective stroke 
of the Rheims coronation, the uncles of the English 
king, who was not yet ten years of age, had brought 
him once more to France, and he remained an inmate 
of the castle of Rouen during the trial. A Norman 
chronicler, who saw his entry into Rouen in July, 
1430, speaks of him as a very beautiful boy (ung tres 
beau filz), and adds that the streets through which he 



THE TRIAL OF JEANNE DARC. i6l 

passed were more magnificently decorated than they had 
ever been before on sacramental days. At the gate were 
banners on which were blazoned the arms of England 
and France ; and on his way to the cathedral the people 
cheered him so loudly that the little king told them to 
cease, for they made too much noise. Shows were exhib- 
ited in the streets, and the king looked at them ; and 
when at last he entered his castle, the bells rang out a 
peal as if God himself had descended from heaven. There 
he remained for a year with his uncle Bedford, the regent, 
his grand-uncle Beaufort, Cardinal of Winchester, his 
governor, the Earl of Warwick, and the chief officers of 
both the royal and the vice-royal courts, all intent upon 
undoing in France what a village maiden had wrought in 
fifteen months. The castle was per^tided with intense 
life, and an ill-disciplined host of guards and men-at-arms 
were posted about it. 

Jeanne Dare, treated by her French captors with 
decency and consideration, and detained in a lordly 
chateau more as a guest than a prisoner, bore the first 
months of her confinement with patience and dignity. 
On one point only she showed herself obstinate : she 
refused to lay aside her man's dress. The people of that 
day, if we may judge from these old records, held in par- 
ticular horror the wearing of man's clothes by a woman. 
The ladies of the chateau, knowing what an advantage 
this costume gave her enemies, provided her with woman's 
clothes, and besought her to put them on. She could not 
be persuaded to so, alleging that she had assumed her 
man's dress by Divine command, and had not yet received 
Divine permission to change it. In other respects she 
was tractable, and seemed absorbed in the events of the 
war, ever longing to be again in the field. 

The news reached her at length that she had been sold 
to the English — the dreadful English ! — and was about to 



l62 THE TRIAL OF JEANNE DARC. 

be given up to them. " I would rather die," she cried, in 
despair, " than be surrendered to the English ! " Then 
her thoughts recurred to her work unfinished — her coun- 
try not jet delivered. " Is it possible," she added, " that 
God will let those good people of Compi£gne perish, who 
have been and are so loyal to their lord ? " Some days of 
anguish passed. Then she took a desperate resolution. 
" I could bear it no longer," she afterwards said ; and so, 
" recommending herself to God and our Lady," she sprang 
one night from the tower in which she was confined to 
the ground, a height, as M. Quicherat computes, of 
between sixty and seventy feet. It was her only 3hance, 
and it was a chance, for she was found the next morning 
lying at the foot of the tower, insensible, indeed, but with 
no bones broken, and not seriously injured. She soon 
revived, and in three days was able to walk about. The 
English claimed their prey, and soon had her safe in the 
castle of Rouen. 

Her new masters did not mean that she should escape. 
They assigned her a room in the first story of the castle, 
" up eight steps," placed two pair of shackles upon her 
legs, and chained her night and day to a thick post. It was 
their policy to degrade as well as to keep her, and they 
accordingly gave her five guards of the lowest rank, three 
of whom were to be always in her room, night and day, 
and two outside. In this woful plight, manacled, chained, 
watched, but not protected, by soldiers, with only a bed 
for all furniture, was she held captive for three months, 
awaiting trial — she who had until recently shone resplen- 
dent at the head of armies, and to ^hom mothers had 
held up their children as she passed through towns, hop* 
ing to win for them the benediction of her smile. 

Her room, we are told, had three keys, one of which 
was kept by the Cardinal of Winchester, one by the 
Inquisitor, and the other by the manager of the trial ; 



THE TRIAL OF JEANNE DARC. 163 

and yet, as it seems, almost any one who chose could 
enter her room, gaze upon her, and even converse with 
her. The little king saw her. The king's advocate 
visited her, and jested with her upon her condition, saying 
that she would not have come to Rouen if she had not 
been brought thither, and asking if she had known before- 
hand if she should be taken. 

" I feared it," said she. 

" If you feared it," he asked, " why were you not upon 
1 your guard ? " 

She replied, " I did not know the day nor the hour." 

After preliminaries that threatened to be endless, the 
public part of the trial began on Wednesday, February 
21, 1431, at eight in the morning, in the great chapel of 
the chateau. The Bishop of Beauvais presided, and of 
the sixty ecclesiastics summoned forty-four were present. 
Three authorized reporters were in their places, and there 
were some other clerks, concealed by a curtain, who took 
notes for the special use of the English regent. There 
was a crowd of spectators, " a great tumult " in the 
chapel, and very little order in the proceedings. At a 
time when lords took their dogs and haw r ks into church 
with them, and merchants made their bargains in the 
naves of cathedrals, we need not look for a scrupulous 
decorum in a court convened to try a girl for the crime of 
being " vehemently suspected of heresy." That was the 
charge : vehernentement suspecte (Theresie. And such a 
grand tumult w r as there in the chapei that day that the 
subsequent sessions were held in a smaller hall of the 
castle. 

The prisoner was brought in, freed from her chains, and 
was allowed to sit. No one of the many pens employed 
in recording the events of this day has given us any hint 
of her appearance. We have, indeed, the enumeration of 
the articles of her man's attire, which was made such a 



164 THE TRIAL OF JEANNE DARC. 

heinous charge against her : " The hair cut round like 
that of young men, shirt, breeches, doublet with twenty 
points reaching to the knee, hat covering only the top of 
the head, boots and gaiters, with spurs, sword, dagger, 
cuirass, lance, and other arms carried by soldiers." This 
was her equipment for the field. She still wore man's 
dress, and doubtless her person showed the effects of nine 
months' imprisonment and three months of chains and 
fetters. 

The presiding bishop told her to place her hands upon 
the Gospel and swear to answer truly the questions that 
would be proposed to her. " I do not know," said she, 
"upon what you wish to question me. Perhaps you will 
ask me things which I ought not to tell you." " Swear," 
rejoined the bishop, " to tell the truth upon whatever may 
be asked of you concerning the faitli and the facts within 
your knowledge." 

" As to my father and mother," she said, " and what I 
did after setting out for France, I will swear willingly ; 
but the revelations which have come to me from God, to 
no one have I related or revealed them, except alone to 
Charles, my king; and I shall not reveal them to you 
though you cut off my head, because I have received them 
by vision and by secret communication, with injunction 
not to reveal them. Before eight days have passed I shall 
know if I am to reveal them to you." 

The bishop urged her again and again to take the oath 
without conditions. She refused, and they were at length 
obliged to yield the point, and accept a limited oath. 
Upon her knees, with both hands placed upon a missal, 
she swore to answer truly whatever might be asked of 
her, so far as she could, concerning the common faith of 
Christians, but no more. Being then questioned concern- 
ing her name and early life, she answered thus : 

" In my own country I was called Jeannette ; since I 



THE TRIAL OF JEANNE DARC. 165 

have been in France I have been called Jeanne. As to 
my surname I know nothing. I was born at the village 
of Domremy, which makes one with the village of Greux. 
The principal church is at Greux. My father is named 
Jacques Dare ; my mother Ysabelle. I was baptized in 
the church of Domremy. One of my godmothers was 
named Agnes, another Jeanne, a third Sibylle. One of 
my godfathers was Jean Lingu6, another Jean Varrey. 
I had several other godmothers, as I have heard my 
mother say. I was baptized, I believe, by Messire Jean 
Minet. I think he is still living. I think I am about 
nineteen years of age. From my mother I learned my 
Pater, my Ave Marie, and my Credo. I learned from my 
mother all that I believe.'' 

" Say your Pater," said the presiding bishop. 

" Hear me in confession, and I will say it for you will- 
ingly." 

Several times she was asked to say the Lord's Prayer, 
but she always replied, " No, I will not say my Pater for 
you unless you hear me in confession." 

" We will willingly give you," said the bishop, " one or 
two notable men who speak French ; will you say your 
Pater to them?" 

" I shall not say it," was her reply, " unless in con- 
fession." 

As the session was about to close, the bishop forbade 
her to leave the prison which had been assigned her in the 
castle, under pain of being pronounced guilty of heresy, 
the crime charged. 

"I do not accept such an injunction," she replied. "If 
ever I escape, no one shall be able to reproach me with 
having broken my faith, as I have not given my word to 
any person whatever." She continued to speak, in 
language not recorded, complaining that they had bound 
her with chains and shackles. 



1 66 THE TRIAL OF JEANNE DARC. 

" You tried several times," said the bishop, " to escape 
from the prison where you were detained, and it was to 
keep you more surely that you were ordered to be put in 
irons." 

" It is true," was her reply, " I wished to get away, and 
I wish it still. Is that not a thing allowed to every 
prisoner ? " 

She was then removed to her chamber, and the court 
broke up. The next morning at eight, in the robing-room 
of the chateau — a large apartment near the great drawing- 
room — the court again convened, forty-seven dignitaries 
of the Church being assembled. Again the captive was 
unchained and brought in. Again she sat in the presence 
of this convocation of trained men, alone, without 
advocate, counsel, or attorney. She understood the issue 
between herself and them. The managers of the trial 
meant to make France believe that this girl was an 
emissary of the devil, and thus she felt herself compelled 
to fall back upon her claim to be the chosen of God, and 
to insist upon this with painful repetition. We must bear 
in mind that she was absolutely severed from all active, 
efficient human sympathy. It was a contest between one 
poor, ignorant girl and the managers of the court, paid 
and backed by the power that governed all England and 
half France, with the stake as the certain consequence to 
her of an erroneous line of defence. In all the trial she 
was the only witness examined. 

Again the bishop required her to take the oath without 
conditions ; to which she replied, " I swore yesterday ; 
+Jiat ought to suffice." 

" Every person," said the bishop, " though he were a 
prince, being required to swear in any matter relating to 
the faith, cannot refuse." 

" I took the oath yesterday," said she ; " that ought to 
be sufficient for you. You ask too much of me." The 



THE TRIAL OF JEANNE DARC. I67 

contest ended as on the day before. She was then inter- 
rogated by Jean Btaupere, a distinguished professor of 
theology. 

" How old were you when you left your father's house ? " 

" As to my age, I cannot answer " 

" Did you learn any trade in your youth ? " 

" Yes ; I learned to spin and sew. In sewing and spin- 
ning I fear no woman in Rouen. For fear of the 
Burgundians * I left my father's house and went to the 
city of Neufchateau, in Lorraine, to the house of a woman 
named La Rousse, where I remained about fifteen days. 
While I was at my father's I assisted at the usual labors 
of the house. I was not accustomed to go to the fields 
with the sheep and other animals. Every year I con- 
fessed to my own pastor, and, when he was engaged, to 
another priest with his permission. Sometimes, also — 
two or three times, I believe — I confessed to religious 
mendicants. That w r as at Neufchateau. At Easter I 
received the sacrament of the Eucharist." 

"Did you receive the sacrament of the Eucharist at 
other festivals besides Easter ? " 

" No matter. I was thirteen years old when I had a 
voice from God, which called upon me to conduct myself 
well. The first time I heard that voice I was twrified. 
It was nooni, in summer, in my father's garden. I had 
not fasted the evening before. I heard that voice at my 
right, toward the church. I seldom heard it when it was 
not accompanied by a flash. This flash came from the 
same side as the voice. Usually it was very brilliant. 
Since I have been in France I have often heard that 
voice." 

" But how could you see the flash which you mentioned, 
since it was on one side ? " 



* French faction siding with the English, 



1 68 THE TRIAL OF JEANNE I) ARC. 

She did not answer this foolish question, but immedi- 
ately resumed, thus : 

" If I was in a forest 1 would hear the voice, for it 
would come to me. It appeared to me to come from lips 
worthy of respect ; I believe it was sent to me by God. 
When I heard it for the third time I recognized that it 
was the voice of an angel. That voice has always guarded 
me well, and I have always well understood it. It told 
me to behave well and to go often to church ; it said to 
me that I must go into France. Do you ask me in what 
form that voice appeared to me ? You will not have more 
about it from me this time. Two or three times a week 
it said to me, ' You must go into France ! 9 My father 
knew nothing about my going. The voice said to me, 
6 Go into France ! ' I could bear it no longer. It said to 
me : ' Go ; raise the siege of the city of Orleans. Go,' 
it added, 'to Robert de Baudricourt, commandant of 
Vaucouleurs ; he will furnish people to accompany you.' 
But I am a poor girl, who knows neither how to ride on 
horseback nor make war ! I went to my uncle's house, 
and told him my wish to remain with him some time ; 
and there I remained eight days. To him I said I must 
go to Vaucouleurs. He took me there. When I arrived 
I knew Robert de Baudricourt, although I had never seen 
him. I knew him, thanks to' my voice, which caused me 
to know him. I said to Robert, ' I must go into France.' 
Twice Robert refused to hear me, and repelled me. The 
third time he received me, and furnished me men ; the 
voice had said that it would be so. The Due de Lorraine 
sent orders to have me brought to him. I went ; I said 
to him that I wished to go into France. The duke ques- 
tioned me upon his health, and I told him I knew nothing 
about it. I spoke to him little about my journey. I told 
him he had to furnish me his son and some people to 
conduct me into France, and that I would pray to God for 



THE TRIAL OF JEANNE DARC. 169 

his health. I went to him with a safe-conduct ; thence I 
returned to Vaucouleurs. From Yaucouleurs I set out 
dressed like a man, with a sword given me by Robert de 
Baudricourt, without other arms. I had with me a 
knight, a squire, and four servants, with whom I reached 
the city of St. Urbain, where I slept in an abbey. On the 
way I passed through Auxerre, where I heard mass in the 
principal church. At that time I often had my voices." 
" Who advised you to wear men's clothes ? " 
Again and again she refused all answer to this question ; 
but at last she said, " I charge no one with that." Then 
she ran on in this manner : " Robert de Baudricourt 
made the men who accompanied me swear to conduct me 
safely and well. ' Go,' said he to me — ' go, let come of 
it what will ! ' I well know that God loves the Due 
d'Orl^ans ; I have had more revelations about the Due 
d'Orl£ans than about any living man except my king. I 
had to change my woman's dress for a man's. Upon that 
point my counsel advised me well. I sent a letter to the 
English before Orleans, telling them to depart, as appears 
from a copy of my letter which has been read in this city 
of Rouen ; but in that copy there are two or three words 
which are not in my letter. ' Yield to the Maid/ ought 
to be changed to ' Yield to the king.' These words also 
are not in my letter — < body for body,' and ' chief of war.' 
I went without difficulty to the king. Having arrived at 
the village of St. Catherine de Flerbois, I sent for the 
first time to the chateau of Chinon, where the king was. 
I reached Chinon toward noon, and took lodgings at first 
at an inn. After dinner I went to the king, who was in 
the chateau. When I entered the room where he was, I 
knew him among many others by the counsel of my 
voice, which revealed him to me. I told him that I 
wished to go and make war against the English." 

" When the voice showed you the king, was there any 
light there?" 



170 THE TRIAL OF JEANNE DARC. 

" Pass on. 9 ' 

« Did you see any angel above the king ? " 

" Spare me ; pass on. Before the king sent me to the 
field, he had many apparitions and beautiful revelations." 

" What revelations and apparitions did the king have ? " 

" I shall not tell you. This is not the time to answer 
you ; but send to the king ; he will tell you. The voice 
had promised me that as soon as I had reached the king, 
he would receive me. Those of my party knew well that 
the voice was sent me from God; they saw and knew 
that voice. I am certain of it. My king and several 
others have heard and seen the voices which came to me ; 
there was Charles de Bourbon and two or three others. 
No day passes in which I do not hear that voice, and I 
have much need of it. But never have I demanded of it 
any recompense except the salvation of my soul. The 
voice told me to remain at St. Denis, in Prance, and I 
wished to do so ; but against my will the lords made me 
set out thence. If I had not been wounded, I should not 
have gone. After having left St. Denis, I was wounded 
in the defences of Paris; but I was cured in five days. 
It is true that I made a skirmish before Paris M 

" Was not that on a holy day?" 

" I believe it was." 

" Was it well to make an assault on a holy day ? " 

To this she only replied by saying : 

"Pass on," and the questioning then ceased for the 
day. The next morning, for the first time, a full court 
was present, the presiding bishop and sixty-two abb^s, 
priors, and other priests. Little was extracted from her 
during this day's examination, although she made some 
spirited answers. Being asked if she knew that she was 
in a state of grace, she said, " If I am not, God put me in 
it ! if I am, God keep me in it ! " They asked her if the 
people of her village were not of the French party, 



THE TRIAL OF JEANNE DARC. I7I 

The old village partisanship blazed up in her answer : 
" If I had known one Burgundian at Domremy, I should 
have been willing to have his, head cut off — that is, if it 
had pleased God." 

The next day was Sunday, and the Monday following 
was probably some holy day of Lent, for the next session 
of the court occurred on Tuesday, when she was exam- 
ined by the same " Master Beaup&re," distinguished 
theologian. He questioned her long, and led her on to 
admissions which her enemies knew well how to use 
against her. 

" How have you been since Saturday last ? " 

" You see well how I have been ; I have been as well 
as I could be." 

" Do you fast every day during this Lent ? " 

" Has that anything to do with the case? No matter: 
yes, I have fasted every day during this Lent." 

" Have you heard your voice since Saturday ? " 

" Yes, indeed, and several times." 

" On Saturday did you hear it in this hall where yon 
are questioned ? " 

" That has nothing to do with your case. No matter : 
yes, I heard it." 

" What did it say to you last Saturday ? " 

"I did not well understand it, and I heard nothing 
that I can repeat to you until I had gone to my chamber." 

" What did it say to you in your chamber on your 
return ? " 

" It said to me, i Answer them boldly.' I take counsel 
of my voices upon what you ask me. I shall willingly 
tell you what I shall have from God permission to reveal ; 
but as to the revelations concerning the King of France, 
I shall not tell them without the permission of my voico.** 

" Has your voice forbidden you to reveal all ? " 

" I have not well understood it." 
11 



172 THE TRIAL OF JEANNE DARC. 

" What did the voice tell you last ? " 

" I asked advice of it upon certain things which you 
asked me." « 

" Did it give you that advice ? " 

" Upon some points, yes ; upon others you may ask me 
information which I shall not give you, not having 
received permission. For if I should respond without 
permission, I should have no more voices to second me. 
When I shall have permission from our Lord, I shall not 
fear to speak, because I shall have warrant so to do." 

" Was the voice which spoke to you that of an angel, 
of a saint, or of God directly ? " 

" It was the voice of St. Catherine and St. Margaret. 
Their heads were adorned with beautiful crowns, very 
rich and very precious. I have permission from our 
Lord to tell you so much. If you have any doubt of this, 
send to Poitiers, where I was formerly interrogated." 

" How did you know that they were saints ? How did 
you distinguish one from the other ? " 

" I know well that they were saints, and I easily dis- 
tinguish one from the other." 

" How do you distinguish them? " 

" By the salute which they make me. Seven years 
have passed since they undertook to guide me. I know 
them well, because they have named themselves to me." 

" Were those two saints clad in the same fabric ? " 

" For the moment I shall tell you no more ; I have not 
permission to reveal it. If you do not believe me, go to 
Poitiers. There are some revelations which belong to 
the King of France, and not to you who interrogate me." 

" Are the two saints of the same age ? " 

" I am not permitted to tell." 

" Did both speak at once, or one at a time ? " 

"I have not permission to tell you; nevertheless, I 
have always had counsel from both." 



THE TRIAL OF JEANNE DARC. 173 

" Which appeared to you first ? " 

" I distinguished them one from the other. I knew 
how I did it once, but I have forgotten. If I receive per- 
mission I will willingly tell you; it is written in the 
record at Poitiers. I have received comfort also from 
St. Michael." 

" Which of those two apparitions came to you first?" 

" St. Michael." 

" Was it a long time ago that you heard the voice of 
St. Michael for the first time ? " 

" I did not mention the voice of St. Michael ; I told you 
that I had great comfort from him." 

" What was the first voice that came to you when you 
were about thirteen years of age ? " 

" It was St. Michael. I saw him before my eyes ; he 
was not alone, but was surrounded by angels from heaven. 
I only came into France by the command of God." 

11 Did you see St. Michael and those angels in a bodily 
form, and in reality ?" 

" I saw them with the eyes of my body as well as I can 
see you. When they left me I wept, and wished to be 
borne away with them." 

" In what form was St. Michael ?" 

" You will have no other answer from me ; I have not 
yet license to tell you." 

" What did St. Michael say to you that first time ? " 

" You will have no answer to-day. My voices said to 
me, 'Answer boldly/ I told the king at once all that 
was revealed to me, because that concerned him ; but I 
have not yet permission to reveal to you all that St. 
Michael said to me. I should be very glad if you had a 
copy of that book which is at Poitiers, if it please God/ 1 

" Have your voices forbidden you to make known your 
revelations without permission from them ? " 

" I do not answer you upon that point. So far as I 



174 THE TRIAL OF JEANNE DARC. 

have received permission I shall answer willingly. I did 
not quite understand if my voices forbade me to reply." 

" What sign do you give that you received that revela- 
tion from God, and that it was St. Catherine and St. Mar- 
garet who conversed with you ? " 

" I have told you it was they ; believe me if you wish.* 

" Is it forbidden you to tell it ? " 

" I did not quite understand whether it was forbidden 
me or not." 

" How can you distinguish the things which you have 
permission to reveal from those which you are forbidden?" 

" Upon certain points I have asked permission, and 
upon some I have obtained it. Rather than have come 
into France without God's permission, I would have been 
torn asunder by four horses." 

" Did God command you to dress like a man ? " 

" As to that dress, it is a trifle — less than nothing. I 
did not take it by the advice of any living man ; neither 
put on this dress nor did anything else except by the 
command of our Lord and the angels." 

" Does the command to wear a man's dress seem to you 
lawful [licite]?" 

" All that I have done was by the command of our 
Lord. If He had told me to wear another dress, I should 
have worn it, because it was His command." 

"Did you not assume this costume by the order of 
Robert de Baudricourt ? " 

" No." 

" Do you think you did well to wear a man's dress ? 

" All that I did was by our Lord's order : I believe 1 
did do well. I expect from it good security and good 
succor." 

" In this particular case, the wearing of a man's dress, 
do you think you did well ? " 

" I have done nothing in the world except by the com- 
mand of God." 



THE TRIAL OF JEANNE DARC. I75 

" When you saw that voice come to you, was there any 
light?" 

" There was much light on all sides, as there should 
have been." (To the interrogator). "There does not 
come as much to you." 

" Was there an angel above your king's head when you 
saw him for the first time ? " 

" By our Lady ! if there was one, I know nothing about 
it. I did not see him." 

" Was there any light ? " 

" There were more than three hundred knights, and 
more than fifty torches, without counting the spiritual 
light. I rarely have revelations without light." 

"How was your king enabled to believe in your 
claims ? " 

" He had good signs, and the learned clergy rendered 
me good testimony." 

" What revelations did your king have ? " 

" You will not have them from me this year. I was 
interrogated for three weeks by the clergy at Chinon and 
at Poitiers. Before being willing to believe me, the king 
had a sign of the truth of my statement, and the clergy 
of my party were of opinion that there was nothing but 
good in my undertaking." 

" Were you at St. Catherine de Fierbois ? " 

" Yes, and there I heard three masses in one day ; then 
I went to the chateau of Chinon, whence I sent a letter 
to the king to know if he would grant me an interview, 
telling him that I had traveled a hundred and fifty 
leagues to come to his assistance, and that I knew many 
things favorable to him. I think I remember saying in 
my letter that I should know how to recognize him among 
all others. I had a sword which I obtained at Vau- 
couleurs. Whilst I was at Tours or at Chinon, I sent to 
seek a sword which was in the church of St. Catherine cte 



I?6 THE TRIAL OF JEANNE DARC. 

Fierbois, behind the altar ; and there it was immediately 
found, covered with rust. That sword was in the earth 
rusty ; above it there were five crosses ; I knew by my 
voice where the sword was. I never saw the man who 
went to find it. I wrote to the priests of the place asking 
them if I might have that sword, and they sent it to me. 
It was under the ground, not very deep, behind the altar, 
as it seems to me. I am not quite sure w r hether it was 
before or behind the altar, but I think I wrote it was 
behind. As soon as it w r as found, the priests of the 
church rubbed it, and at once, without effort, the rust fell 
off. It was an armorer of Tours who went to find it. 
The priests of Fierbois made me a present of a scabbard, 
those of Tours of another ; one w r as of crimson velvet, 
the other of cloth of gold. I caused a third to be made 
of very strong leather. When I was taken I had not that 
sword on. I always wore the sword of Fierbois from the 
time I had it until my departure from St. Denis, after the 
assault upon Paris." 

" What benediction did you pronounce, or cause to be 
pronounced, upon that sword ? " 

" I neither blessed it nor had it blessed ; I should not 
have known how to do it. Much I loved that sword, 
because it was found in the church of St. Catherine, 
whom I warmly love." 

" Did you sometimes place your sword upon an altar, 
and in so placing it was it that your sword might be more 
fortunate ? " 

" Not that I remember." 

" Did you sometimes pray that it might be more for* 
tunate ? " 

" Beyond question, I wished my arms to be very for* 
tunate." 

" Had you that sword on when you were taken ? " 

"No; I had one that had been taken from a Bur* 
gundian." 



THE TRIAL OF JEANNE DARC. ^77 

" Where was the sword of Fierbois ? " 

" I offered a sword and some arms to St. Denis, but it 
was not that sword. The sword I then wore I got at 
Lagny, and wore it from Lagny even to Compi£gne. It 
was a good sword for service ; excellent to give good 
whacks and wipes [torchons'] . As to what has become 
of the other sword, it does not regard this trial, and I 
shall not now reply thereupon. My brothers have all my 
property, my horses, my sword, as I suppose, and the rest, 
worth more than twelve thousand crowns." 

" When you were at Orleans, had you a standard or 
banner, and of what color was it ? " 

" I had a banner, the ground of which was covered with 
lilies ; and there was a picture upon it of the world, with 
an angel on each side. It was white, of the white fabric 
called fustian [boucassin]. There was written upon it, I 
think, ' Jhesus Maria,' and it was fringed with silk." 

" Were the names of Jhesus Maria written on the 
upper or the under part, on the lower, or on one side ? " 

" Upon one side, I believe." 

" Which did you love best, your banner or your sword ? " 

" Much better, forty times better, my banner than my 
sword." 

" Who caused you to have that picture made upon your 
banner ? " 

" Often enough I have told you that I . did nothing 
except by the command of God. It was myself who 
carried that banner when I attacked the enemy, in order 
to avoid killing any one, for I have never killed a single 
person." 

" What force did your king give you when he accepted 
your services ? " 

" He gave me ten or twelve thousand men. At first I 
went to Orleans, to the tower of St. Loup, and afterward 
to that of the bridge." 



I78 THE TRIAL OF JEANNE DARC. 

u At the attack of which tower was it that you with- 
drew your men ? " 

" I do not remember. I was very sure of raising the 
seige of Orleans ; 1 had had a revelation on the subject ; 
I told the king before going there I should raise it." 

" Before the assault, did you tell your people that you 
alone would receive the javelins and the stones thrown 
by the machines and cannons ? " 

"No; a hundred of my people, and even more were 
wounded. I said to them, ' Fear not, and you will raise 
the siege.' At the assault of the bridge tower I was 
wounded in the neck with an arrow or lance ; but I had 
great comfort from St. Catherine, and I was cured in less 
than fifteen days. I did not cease on that account to ride 
on horseback and to labor. I knew well I should be 
wounded ; I told my king so, but that, notwithstanding, I 
should keep at work. They had been revealed to me by 
the voices of my two saints, blessed Catherine and blessed 
Margaret. It was I who first placed a ladder against the 
tower, and it was in raising that ladder that I was 
wounded in the neck by the lance." 

The session ended soon after, and the prisoner was 
removed. There were six of these public examinations, 
but nothing further of much importance was elicited by 
them. 

The public examinations being at an end, the court 
took a week to review and consider the evidence obtained. 
They decided that further light was needed on some 
points, and ordered that she should be examined in secret 
by seven learned doctors, and her answers recorded for 
the subsequent use of the whole court. There were nine 
of these secret questionings, but she adhered to her fatal 
line of defence, ever insisting upon her supernatural pre- 
tensions, and adding particulars which placed her more 
hopelessly than before in the power of her enemies. To 



THE TRIAL OF JEANNE DARC. 1 79 

complete the reader's view of this portion of the trial, I 
select one of these secret examinations (the fourth) for 
translation, in which she overtasked the credulity even of 
her adherents, and made her well-wishers in the court 
powerless to serve her. 

" What was the sign which you gave your king ? " 

" Would you like me to perjure myself ?" 

" Have you promised and sworn to St. Catherine not to 
reveal that sign ? " 

" I have sworn and promised not to reveal that sign, 
and of my own accord, too, because they pressed me too 
much to reveal it ; and then I said to myself: I promise 
not to speak of it to any man in the world. The sign 
was that an angel assured my king, when bringing him 
the crown, that he would possess the whole kingdom of 
France, through the help of God and my labor. The 
angel told him also to set me at work, that is to say, give 
me some soldiers, or otherwise he would not be crowned 
and anointed so soon." 

" Have you spoken to St. Catherine since yesterday ? " 

"I have heard her since yesterday, and she told me 
several times to answer the judges boldly concerning 
whatever they should ask me touching my case." 

" How did the angel carry the crown ? and did he place 
it himself upon your king's head ? " 

" The crown was given to an archbishop, namely, the 
Archbishop of Rheims, I believe in my king's presence. 
The archbishop received it, and remitted it to the king. 
I was myself present. The crown was afterward placed 
in my king's treasury." 

" Where was it that the crown was brought to the 
king?" 

'' It was in the king's chamber at the chateau of 
Chinon." 

" What day and hour ? " 



l80 THE TRIAL OF JEANNE DARC. 

" As to the I day, know not ; in regard to the hour, it 
was early. I have no further recollection concerning it. 
For the month, it was March or April, it seems to me, 
two years from the present month. It was after Easter." 

" Was it the first day of your seeing this sign that 
your king saw it also ? " 

(i Yes, he saw it the same day." 

*'Of what material was the said crown ?" 

" It is good to know that it was fine gold ; so rich was 
it that I should not know how to estimate its value, nor 
appreciate its beauty. The crown signified that my king 
should possess the kingdom of France." 

" Were there any precious stones in it ? " 

" I have told you what I know of it." 

" Did you handle or kiss it?" 

" No." 

" Did the angel who brought that crown come from 
heaven or earth ? " 

" He came from on high, and I understand he came 
by the command of our Lord. He entered by the door 
of the chamber. When he came before my king, he 
paid homage to him by bowing before him, and by pro- 
nouncing the words which I have already mentioned, and 
at the same time recalled to his memory the beautiful 
patience with which he had borne his great troubles. 
The angel walked from the door, and touched the floor in 
coming to the king." 

" How far was it from the door to the king ? " 

" My impression is that it was about the length of a 
lance ; and he returned by the same way he had entered. 
When the angel came, I accompanied him, and went with 
him up the staircase to the king's chamber. The angel 
entered first, and then myself, and I said to the king, 
i Sire, here is your sign : take it.' " 

" In what place did the angel appear to you ? " 



THE TRIAL OF JEANNE DARC. i8l 

" I was almost continually in prayer that God would 
send a sign to the king, and I was in my lodgings at a 
good woman's house near the chateau of Chinon when 
he came ; then we went together toward the king ; he 
was accompanied by other angels whom no one saw. If 
it had not been for love of me, and to put me beyond the 
reach of those who accused me, I believe several who saw 
the angel would not have seen him." 

" Did all who were with the king see the angel ?" 

" I believe the Archbishop of Rheims saw him, as well 
as the lords D'Alcinjon, La Tremouille, and Charles de 
Bourbon. As to the crown, many churchmen and others 
saw it who did not see the angel." 

" Of what countenance, of what stature, was that 
angel ? " 

" I have not permission to say ; to-morrow I will answer 
that." 

" Were all the angels who accompanied him of the same 
countenance ? " 

" Some of them were a good deal alike, others not, at 
least from my point of view. Some had wings ; others 
had crowns. In their company were St. Catherine and 
St. Margaret, who were with the angel just mentioned, 
and the other angels also, even in the king's chamber." 

" How did the angel leave you ? " 

" He left me in a little chapel. I was very angry at 
his going. I wept. Willingly would I have gone away 
with him — that is to say, my soul." 

" After the angel's departure, did you continue joyful ? " 

" He did not leave me fearful or frightened, but 1 was 
angry at his departure." 

" Was it on account of your merit that God sent to you 
His angel ? " 

" He came for a great purpose, and I was in hopes that 
the king would take him for a sign, and that they would 



1 82 THE TRIAL OF JEANNE I) ARC. 

cease arguing about my carrying succor to the good peo- 
ple of Orleans. The angel came, also, for the merit of 
the king and of the good Due d'Orl^ans." 

" Why to you rather than another ? " 

" It pleased God to act thus by means of a simple 
maid in order to repel the enemies of the king." 

"Has he told you whence the angel brought that 
crown ? " 

" It was brought from God, and there is no goldsmith 
in the world who could make it so rich or so beautiful." 

" Where did he get it ? " 

" I attribute it to God, and know not otherwise whence 
it was taken." 

" Did a good smell come from the crown ? Did it 
shine?" 

" I do not remember ; I will inform myself." Resum- 
ing after a pause : " Yes, it smelled well, and will always, 
provided it is well taken care of, as it should be. It was 
in the style of a crown." 

" Did the angel write you a letter ? " 

" No." 

" What sign had your king, the people who were with 
him, and yourself, to make you think it was an angel ? " 

" The king believed it through the instruction of the 
churchmen who were there, and by the sign of the 
crown." 

" But how did the clergy themselves know that it was 
an angel ? " 

" By their learning, and because they were clergymen." 

The session closed soon after, and she was conducted 
once more to her apartment. The learned doctors 
questioned her closely, and even skillfully, during these 
nine secret sessions, and she often answered theitt with 
vivacity and force. They asked her one day why she had 
thrown herself from the tower. She told them that she 



THE TRIAL OF JEANNE DARC. 1 83 

had heard the people of Compiegne were to be put to the 
sword, even to children seven years of age, and that she 
preferred to die rather than to survive such a massacre 
of good people. " That," she added, " was one of the 
reasons. The other was, I knew I had been sold to the 
English, and I held it better to die than fall into the 
hands of my adversaries." On another occasion she 
declared that she had not sprung from the tower in 
despair, but in the hope of escaping, and of going to the 
succor of the brave men who were in peril. She owned, 
however, that it was a rash and wrong action, of which 
she had repented. As she often expressed a desire to 
hear mass, they asked her one day which she would pre- 
fer, to put on a woman's dress and hear mass, or retain 
her man's clothes and not hear it. Her answer was, 
" First assure me that I shall hear mass if I put on 
woman's clothes, and then I will answer you." 

" Very well," said the questioner, " I engage that you 
shall hear mass if you will put on a woman's dress." 

She replied that she would wear a woman's dress to 
mass, but that on her return she should resume her man's 
clothes. 

They asked her finally, and the trial turned upon this 
point, if she was willing to submit all her words and 
deeds to the judgment of the holy mother Church. 

" The Church ! " she exclaimed. " I love it, and desire 
to sustain it with my whole power, for the sake of our 
Christian faith. It is not I who should be hindered from 
going to church and hearing mass." But she would not 
answer this decisive question in a way to increase her 
chances of escape. As to what she had done for her king 
and country, she said she submitted it all to God, who 
had sent her, and then she wandered into a prediction 
that the French were on the eve of a great victory. The 
priest repeated his question, but she only replied that she 



Io4 THE TRIAL OF JEANNE DARC. 

submitted all to God, our Lady, and the saints. " And 
my opinion is," said she, " that God and the Church are 
one." The questioner then explained to her that there 
was a Church militant and a Church triumphant, and 
that it was to the Church militant — consisting of the 
Pope, cardinals, bishops, priests, and all good Catholics — 
to which her submission was required. 

But she could not be brought to submit to the Church 
militant. To the end of these nine incisive questionings 
she held her ground firmly, claiming supernatural war- 
rant for all that she had done for her king and party, 
glorying in it, protesting her warm desire to renew her 
labors in the field, and refusing to resume the dress of her 
sex. She said that if they condemned her to the stake, 
she would wear at the last hour a long woman's garment, 
but till then she should retain the attire assigned her by 
Divine command. She refused, a few days after, even to 
change her dress for the mass. 

Further deliberation followed, and at length the charges 
against her were drawn up, to the number of seventy, 
each of which was read to her in open court, and her 
answer required. Many weary days were thus consumed 
without result. When the last charge had been read and 
answered, she was asked again the question upon which 
her life depended, " If the Church militant says to you 
(hat your revelations are illusory or diabolical, will you 
submit to the decision of the Church ? " Her answer was 
the same as before : " I submit all to God, whose com- 
mand I shall always obey." 

The seventy charges were then condensed to twelve, for 
the convenience of the court. These charges were chiefly 
drawn from her own avowals. The first article, for 
example, accused her of saying that she had been visited 
and guided by St. Michael, St. Catherine, and St. Marga- 
ret. Her leap from the tower, as related by herself, was 



THE TRIAL OF JEANNE DARC. 1 85 

one of the charges, her inscribing sacred names on her 
banner was another. The charges, in short, were the 
condensed statement of her own answers, the chief point 
of offence being that she claimed for her mission super- 
natural authorization and aid. The outward and visible 
sign of this pretension was the wearing of men's clothes. 

The patience of the court with their contumacious 
prisoner was remarkable, and seems to indicate that the 
court as a body meant to try her fairly, and that there 
were members who desired her acquittal. Eight learned 
doctors were next appointed to visit her in her room, and 
give her a solemn and affectionate admonition, and urge 
her, by timely submission and repentance, to save her 
body from the fire and her soul from perdition. They 
performed this duty well. They offered to send her other 
learned men, if she would designate them, who would 
visit her, instruct her, resolve her doubts, and guide her 
into the true way. She thanked them for their pains, 
adhered to all her pretensions, and refused to change her 
dress. " Let come what will," said she, " I shall not say 
or do otherwise." 

After days of further deliberation, they caused her to 
be conducted to a chamber of the great tower, in which 
were the apparatus of the torture, and the men in official 
costume who usually applied it. "Truly," said she, as 
she looked upon the hideous implements, " if you tear me 
limb from limb, and separate soul from body, I should 
say nothing other than I have said ; and even if I should, 
I should forever maintain that you made me say it by 
force." And she went on to speak of her voices in her 
usual manner. The court decided that, considering " the 
hardness of her heart," the punishment of the torture 
would profit her little, and that therefore it might be dis- 
pensed with, at least for the present. One learned and 
pious doctor thought that the torture would be a " salu- 



1 86 



THE TRIAL OF JEANNE DARC. 



tary medicine for her soul," but the general opinion was 
that she had already confessed enough. As a Catholic 
she had indeed put herself fatally in the wrong, and given 
her enemies all the pretext for her condemnation which 
the age required. 

More deliberations followed. The University of Paris 
was formally consulted, and would give but one answer : 
either the events related by the prisoner occurred, or they 
did not occur ; if they did not occur, she is a contuma- 
cious liar ; if they did occur, she is a sorceress and a 
servant of the devil. She must therefore confess, recant, 
renounce, submit, or suffer a penalty proportioned to her 
crimes. This decision was also communicated to the Maid 
with the utmost solemnity, and she was again exhorted and 
entreated to submit. The address delivered to her on this 
occasion was eloquent and pathetic, and the argument 
presented was one which should have convinced a Catholic. 
The orator, however, expended his main strength in ten- 
der entreaty, begging her, for her immortal's soul's sake, 
not to persist in setting her own uninstructed judgment 
against that of the University of Paris, and so great a 
body of eminent clergy. It was of no avail. " If," said 
she, " I was already condemned, if I saw the brand lighted, 
the fagots ready, and the executioner about to kindle the 
fire, and if I was actually in the flames, I should say only 
what I have said, and maintain all that I have said, till 
death. 

She was to have one more opportunity to escape the 
fire. On Thursday morning, May 24th, the scene of the 
trial was changed from a room in Rouen castle to the 
public cemetery of the city. A spacious platform was 
erected for the prisoner. The " Cardinal of England " 
attended, and there was a vast concourse of excited 
people, now admitted for the first time to witness the 
proceedings. The Maid was conveyed to the spot in a 



THE TRIAL OF JEANNE DARC. I Sy 

cart, and placed upon the stand prepared for her, the cart 
remaining to take her to the castle or to the stake, accord- 
ing to the issue of this day's session. When all were in 
their places, a preacher of great renown rose, and, taking 
his place opposite to the prisoner, preached a sermon upon 
the text, " A branch can not bear fruit of itself except it 
abide in the vine," which he concluded by a last solemn 
exhortation to the prisoner to yield submission to the 
Church. 

She was not shaken. In her first reply, however, she 
tried a new expedient, saying, "Send to Rome, to our holy 
father the Pope, to whom, after God, I yield submission." 
Three times she was asked if she was willing to renounce 
those of her acts and words which the court condemned- 
Her last reply was, " I appeal to God and our holy father 
the Pope." 

The presiding bishop then began the reading of her 
sentence. The reading had proceeded two or three 
minutes, when suddenly her courage failed her, and she 
yielded. She interrupted the reading. " I am willing," 
she cried, " to hold all that the Church ordains, all chat 
you judges shall say and pronounce. I will obey your 
orders in everything." Then she repeated several times : 
" Since the men of the church decide that my apparitions 
and revelations are neither sustainable nor credible, I 
do not wish to believe nor sustain them. I yield in every 
thing to you and to our holy mother Church." 

This submission had been provided for by the manager 
of the trial. He at once produced a formal recantation 
and abjuration, which she was required to sign. ' 4 1 can 
neither read nor write," she said. The king's secretary 
placed the document before her, put a pen in her hand, 
and guided it while she wrote " Jehanne," and appended 
the sign of the cross. 

The bishop then produced another sentence which had 



1 88 THE TRIAL OP JEANNE DARC. 

been prepared beforehand in view of her possible abjura- 
tion. This document, after recounting her errors and her 
submission, relieved her from excommunication, and 
urged her to a true repentance ; but it ended with a few 
words of crushing import to such a spirit : " Since you 
have rashly sinned against God and holy Church, finally, 
definitively, we condemn you to perpetual imprisonment, 
with the bread of grief and the water of anguish, to the 
end that you may mourn your faults and commit no 
more." Then she was conveyed to the castle. That 
afternoon, in the presence of six or seven ecclesiastics, 
after exhortation, she took off her man's dress with 
apparent willingness, and put on that of a woman. She 
also allowed some locks of hair, which she had worn 
hitherto in the fashion of men, to be cut off and taken 
away. 

And thus, on that Thursday afternoon, May 24th, exactly 
one year after her capture, in the sixth month of her 
confinement in the castle, and fourth of her public trial, 
she found herself still in prison, chained as before, 
guarded as before by men, and deprived of the one solace 
that captives know — hope. She had saved her life, but 
not regained her darling liberty. She was not in the 
field. She was a captive, shorn, despoiled, degraded, 
hopeless, lacerated by fetters, and weighed down by heavy 
chains, with men always in her cell, and liable every hour 
to the taunts of hostile and contemptuous visitors. 

She bore it Friday, Saturday, Sunday. When she rose 
on Monday morning, she put on her man's dress. The 
bishop and several other members of the court arrived 
but too soon ; for this was welcome news to the English 
party. They asked her why she had resumed that dress. 
" Because," said she, " being with men, it is more decent. 
I have resumed it, too, because you have not kept your 
promises that I should hear mass, and receive my Saviour, 



THE TRIAL OP JEANNE DARC. 1 89 

and have my irons taken off. I prefer to die than be in 
irons. Let me go to mass, take off my chains, put me 
in a proper prison, let me have a woman for companion, 
and then I will be good, and do what the Church desires." 
They asked her if her voices had revisited her, if she 
still believed that they were St. Catherine and St. Mar- 
garet, if she adhered to what she had said with regard to 
the crown given to her king by St. Michael. To all such 
questions she replied bluntly in the affirmative, as if court- 
ing death. "All that I revoked and declared on the 
scaffold," said she, " I did through fear of the fire. I 
prefer to die than endure longer the pain of imprison- 
ment. Never have I done anything against God or the 
faith. I did not understand what was in the act of 
abjuration. If the judges desire it, I will wear woman's 
dress ; beyond that I will yield nothing." 

To reassemble the court, and bring this erring, tor- 
tured, devoted child to the stake, required but two days. 
On Wednesday morning, May 30, 1431, there was another 
open-air session of the court, in a market-place of Rouen, 
where there was erected a platform of another kind for the 
prisoner. On that last morning of her life her demeanor 
was not stoical nor histrionic, but simply human — the 
demeanor of a terrified girl of nineteen who was nerving 
herself to a frightful ordeal which she herself had chosen. 

She bewailed her fate with cries and sobs. They gave 
her a priest to hear her in confession, after which the 
sacrament was brought to her by the usual procession of 
priests chanting a litany, and bearing many candles. She 
received it " very devoutly, and with a great abundance 
of tears," and passed her remaining time in prayer. The 
same cart conveyed her to the market-place, guarded by 
" a hundred and twenty " English men-at-arms. Another 
sermon was preached, upon the text, " If one member 
suffer, the other members suffer also." The bishop thei* 



190 THE TRIAL OF JEANNE DARC. 

read a long sentence, of which a few words are given at 
the beginning of this article, which he ended by handing 
her over to the secular arm. The members of the court 
departed, and then, without any other legal formality, she 
was bound to the stake and burned. Tradition gives us 
many particulars of her last moments, but as they were 
not gathered till 1456, twenty-five years after her ashes 
were thrown into the Seine, we must receive them with 
caution. It is credible enough that she died embracing a 
cross, and with her eyes fixed upon another cross held up 
before her by a sympathizing priest. In 1456, the period 
of her " rehabilitation," that man was accounted happy 
who had something pleasing or glorious to tell of the 
Maid whom France then revered as a deliverer. 

It is difficult for us to conceive the importance attached 
to this trial at the time. The English government, by a 
long circular letter, notified all the sovereigns of Europe 
of the result of the trial, and gave them an outline of 
the proceedings. The University at Paris sent a par- 
ticular account of the trial to the Pope, to the cardinals, 
and to the chief prelates of Christendom. But five years 
later Paris surrendered to the King of France, and 
twenty-five years later Normandy itself owned allegiance 
to Charles VII. 







HARRIET MARTINEAU. 



HARRIET MARTINEAU. 

" TnTOW I detest benevolent people!" Sydney Smith 
1 I is reported to have said, on looking up from a 
book he had been reading. 

"Why?" asked his daughter. 

" Because they are so cruel/' was his reply. 

I was reminded of this anecdote upon looking over a 
book lately published, entitled "Harriet Martineau' s Auto- 
biography," which is full of the personal gossip that amuses 
readers, but gives extreme pain to large numbers of worthy 
persons who cannot possibly set themselves right with the 
public by correcting the misconceptions of a writer no 
longer among the living. Miss Martineau was, doubt- 
less, a lady who strongly desired the happiness of man- 
kind, and who had some correct ideas of the manner 
in which human happiness is to be promoted. She ren- 
dered much good service in her day and generation, but 
she left this book to be published after her death, which 
is unjust to almost every individual named in it, and, 
most of all, unjust to herself. 

And the worst of it is, no effective answer can be made 
to it. The gifted family of the Kembles, for example, and 
particularly Mrs. Kemble, a lady still living, with children 
and other relations, are held up to the contempt of man- 
kind as vain, vulgar, and false. Perhaps the Kembles 
thought Miss Martineau vain, vulgar, and false ; but 
they have not had the indecency to tell the public so. 
Macaulay, Miss Martineau tells us, had "no heart," and 

193 



194 HARRIET MARTINEAU. 

his nephew, Trevelyan, " no head." Lord Althorp was 
" one of nature's graziers;" Lord Brougham was a creat- 
ure obscene and treacherous ; Earl Russell and the whole 
Whig party were a set of conceited incapables ; Thack- 
eray, the satirist of snobs, was himself a snob; N. P. 
WiHis, a lying dandy; Eastlake an artist of "limited" 
understanding; and so she deals out her terrible gossip, 
which might have been harmless enough spoken at a tea- 
table to a confidential friend, but was not proper to be 
printed during the lifetime of the individuals named, nor 
during the lifetime of their immediate descendants. 

Things go by contraries in this world. We often find 
high Tories who, in their practical dealings with their 
fellow-men, are perfectly democratic; and it is well known 
that some of the most positive democrats this country has 
ever produced have been, in their personal demeanor, 
haughty and inhuman. It is much the same with philan- 
thropists and misanthropists. A person may snarl at 
mankind in a book and be the soul of kindness in his 
own circle, and he may deluge the world with benevolent 
"gush," without having learned to be agreeable or good- 
tempered in his own home. 

Miss Martineau, however, has been to no one so unjust 
as to herself; for she has not had the art to make her 
readers feel and realize the disadvantages under which 
she labored. She was deaf; she had no sense of smell, 
and only a very imperfect sense of taste. She could hear, 
it is true, by the aid of a trumpet, but she was cut off 
from all that higher, easier, constant intercourse with her 
kind which people enjoy who rarely know what silence is, 
and who hear human speech of some kind at almost every 
moment when they are awake. And she had a childhood 
which disarms censure. During the first thirty years of 
her life, she scarcely enjoyed one day of health or peace, 
all in consequence of her mother's neglect. The child, 



HARRIET MARTINEATJ. 1 95 

soon after it was born, was sent out of the way to a wet- 
nurse in the country, who nearly starved her to death, 
having an insufficiency of milk, and being unwilling to 
lose the charge of the child by telling the truth. Her 
deafness and her bad health during the first third of her 
life were always ascribed by her mother to this starva- 
tion. 

The story of her childhood is almost incomprehensible 
to American parents, who are apt to watch their children 
with even an excessive care and tenderness. Her parents 
seemed never to have suspected what she suffered, nor 
did she ever have confidence enough in them to attempt 
to make known to them her miseries. Milk, for example, 
always disagreed with her, and to such a degree that she 
had " a horrid lump at her throat for hours every morn- 
ing, and the ipost terrible oppression in the night." 
Nevertheless, as English children are always fed upon 
milk, she continued to drink it morning and night, with- 
out mentioning her sufferings, until she was old enough 
tq drink tea> which, in England, is usually about the six- 
teenth year. How amazing is this! On what strange 
terms children must live with their elders where such a 
thing could be! 

During all her childhood she was tormented by fear 
and shame. She was afraid of everything and everybody. 
Sometimes, at the head of the stairs, she would be panic- 
stricken, and feel sure she could never get down. In 
going a few steps into the garden she would be afraid to 
look behind her, dreading an imaginary wild beast. She 
was afraid of the star-lighted sky, having an awful dread 
of its coming down upon her, crushing her, and remaining 
upon her head. She was afraid of persons, and declares 
that, to the best of her belief, she never met with an 
individual whom she was not afraid of until she was six- 
teen years of age. The exhibition of a magic lantern was 



I96 HARRIET MARTINEAU. 

awful to her, and she was terrified beyond measure by 
seeing the prismatic colors in the glass drops of a chande- 
lier. There were certain individuals whom she met 
occasionally in the town, of whom she knew nothing, 
neither their name nor their occupation, and yet she could 
never see them without experiencing the most intense 
fear. At the same time she was bitterly ashamed o£ this 
weakness, and seems never to have thought of mentioning 
it to a living creature, least of all to her mother and 
sisters. For a long course of years — from about eight to 
fourteen — she tried with all her might to pass a day 
without crying. 

"I was a persevering child," she says, "and I knew I 
tried hard ; but I failed. I gave up at last, and during 
all those years I never did pass a day without crying." 

She thinks her temper must have been " excessively 
bad," and that she was " an insufferable child for gloom, 
obstinacy, and crossness/ ' But she also thought that if 
her parents and brothers and sisters had shown ever so 
little sympathy with her unhappiness, she should have 
responded with joyous alacrity. When her hearing began 
to grow dull, it did not excite sympathy in the family, 
but distrust and contempt. She would be told that " none 
are so deaf as they who do not w^ish to hear ; " and when 
it could no longer be doubted that she was growing deaf, 
the best help she got was from her brother, who told her 
that he hoped she would never make herself troublesome 
to other people. What a delightful family ! Such treat- 
ment, however, had one good effect : she made up her 
mind, and she kept her resolution, never to make her 
deafness a burthen to others. She never asked any one 
to repeat a remark in company which she had not caught, 
and always trusted her friends to tell her what it was 
necessary for her to know. 

During the generation which saw the beginning and 



HARRIET MARTINEAU. 197 

the end of Napoleon's career, a kind of savageness seems 
to have pervaded human life. All Europe was fighting ; 
school-boys were encouraged and expected to fight, and 
the softer feelings of our nature were undervalued or 
despised. Bonaparte made life harder for almost every 
one in the civilized world ; and this may partly explain 
how an intelligent, virtuous, and even benevolent family 
could have lived together in a manner which seems to us 
heartless and savage. 

Her parents gave her an excellent education. She 
could make shirts and puddings ; she could iron and 
mend; she acquired all household arts, as girls did in 
those days ; but at the same time she became a considera- 
ble proficient in languages and science, and very early 
began to show an inclination to composition. The circum- 
stance which made her a professional writer was interest- 
ing. She had secretly sent an article to a monthly 
magazine, and a few days after, as she was sitting after 
tea in her brother's parlor, he said : 

" Come now, we have had plenty of talk ; I will read 
you something." 

He took the very magazine that contained her contri- 
bution, and opening it at her article he glanced at it, 
and said : 

" They have got a new hand here. Listen." 

He read a few lines, and then exclaimed : 

" Ah ! This is a new hand ; they have had nothing as 
good as this for a long while." 

He kept bursting out with exclamations of approval as 
he continued to read, until, at length, observing her 
silence, he said : 

" Harriet, what is the matter with you ? I never knew 
you so slow to praise anything before." 

She replied in utter confusion : 

" I never could baffle anybody. The truth is, that 
paper is mine." 



198 Harriet martineau. 

Her brother said nothing, but finished the article in 
silence, and spoke no more until she rose to go home. 
Then he laid his hand on her shoulder, and said, in a 
serious tone : 

" Now, dear " (he had never called her dear before), 
" now, dear, leave it to other women to make shirts and 
darn stockings, and do you devote yourself to this." 

And so she did. With immense perseverance, and 
after encountering every sort of discouragement, she 
reached the public ear, by writing stories in illustration 
of the truths of political economy. For a time she was 
the most popular story-writer in England, and the aid of 
her pen was sought by cabinet ministers, as well as by 
the conductors of almost every important periodical. She 
was so good and useful a woman, that we must forgive 
whatever mistakes of judgment and temper we may lament 
in her autobiography. She loved America almost as 
though she had been born upon its soil, and Americans 
must take her censures in good part. 

During her residence in the United States, she sacrificed 
her popularity, and even risked her personal safety, by 
openly espousing the cause of the detested abolitionists. 
At one of their meetings in Boston, in 1835, to attend 
which she braved the fury of a mob, she deliberately, and 
with full knowledge of what her action involved, spoke 
in defence of their principles. Her own narrative of the 
event, as given in her Autobiography, is of singular 
interest : 

"In the midst of the proceedings of the meeting, a 
note was handed to me written in pencil on the back of 
the hymn which the party were singing. It was from 
Mr. Loring, and these were his words : 

" • Knowing your opinions, I just ask you whether you 
would object to give a word of sympathy to those who 
are suffering here for what you have advocated elsewhere. 
It would afford great comfort.' 



HARRIET MAkTINEAU. I99 

"The moment of reading this note was one of the 
most painful of my life. I felt that I could never be 
happy again if I refused what was asked of me ; but to 
comply was probably to shut against me every door in 
the United States but those of the Abolitionists. I 
should no more see persons and things as they ordinarily 
were. I should have no more comfort or pleasure in my 
travels ; and my very life would be, like other people's, 
endangered by an avowal of the kind desired. George 
Thompson was then on the sea, having narrowly escaped 
with his life, and the fury against ' foreign incendiaries ' 
ran high. Houses had been sacked ; children had been 
carried through the snow from their beds at midnight ; 
travelers had been lynched in the market-places, as well 
as in the woods ; and there was no safety for any one, 
native or foreign, who did what I was now compelled to 
do. Having made up my mind, I was considering how 
the word of sympathy should be given, when Mrs. Loring 
came up, with an easy and smiling countenance, and said : 

" < You have had my husband's note. He hopes you 
will do as he says ; but you must please yourself, of 
course.' 

" I said, ' No ; it is a case in which there is no choice/ 

" ' Oh, pray do not do it unless you like it. You must 
do as you think right.' 

" ' Yes,' said I, < I must.' 

" At first, out of pure shyness, I requested the president 
to say a few words for me ; but, presently, remembering 
the importance of the occasion and the difficulty of set- 
ting right any mistake the president might fall into, I 
agreed to that lady's request, that I should speak for 
myself. Having risen, therefore, with his note in my 
hand, and being introduced to the meeting, I said, as was 
precisely recorded at the time, what follows : 

" < I have been requested by a friend present to say 
eomething — if only a word — to express my -sympathy in 



200 HARRIET MARTINEAU. 

the objects of this meeting. I had supposed that my 
presence here would be understood as showing my sym- 
pathy with you. But as I am requested to speak, I will 
say what I have said through the whole South, in every 
family where I have been ; that I consider slavery as 
inconsistent with the law of God and as incompatible 
with the law of his Providence. I should certainly say 
no less at the North than at the South concerning this 
utter abomination, and I now declare that in your princi- 
ples I fully agree.' " 

" As I concluded, Mrs. Chapman bowed down her glow- 
ing head on her folded arms, and there was a murmur of 
satisfaction through the room, while, outside, the growing 
crowd (which did not, however, become large) was hoofr- 
ing and yelling, and throwing mud and dust against the 
windows." 

It was bravely done. Happily, the present generation 
can form but an imperfect idea of the sacrifice she made 
in taking sides with a party then held in equal abhorrence 
and contempt. Several days passed before this aetion of 
Miss Martineau was known to the public. Gradually, 
however, it circulated, and, at length, the little speech 
itself was printed verbatim in a report of the Anti- 
Slavery Society. Precisely that happened which Miss 
Martineau had anticipated. Every door was closed 
against her, except those of the Abolitionists. No more 
invitations littered her table. She was a lion no longer. 
Houses where she was known to be staying were avoided, 
as though they had shown to the passer-by the warning 
signal of contagion. The Boston Advertiser opened upon 
her its provincial thunder, and Boston society shuddered 
at the awful fate which the brave woman had brought 
upon herself. The press in general denounced her, and 
even some of the Abolitionists felt that, being a stranger, 
she need not have incurred this obloquy. 

Miss Martineau's tranquility was not for a moment 



HARRIET MAF.TINEAU. 201 

disturbed, and she was glad that, in so critical a moment, 
she had been able to preserve her self-respect. 

During the greater part of her mature life she felt her- 
self compelled to embrace the unpopular side of most of 
the questions which deeply stirred the human mind. For 
some years she retained the faith of her parents, which 
was the Unitarian ; but, as her intelligence matured, she 
found the beliefs and usages of that sect less and less 
satisfactory, until she reached the settled conviction that 
all the creeds and religions of the earth were of purely 
human origin. She rejected the idea of a personal deity, 
and regarded the belief in immortality as an injurious 
delusion. It is a proof, at once, of the profound excel- 
lence of her character and the advanced catholicity of 
her generation, that these opinions, which she never con- 
cealed and never obtruded, estranged none of her friends, 
even those of the most pronounced orthodoxy. Miss 
Florence Nightingale, for example, a devoted member of 
the Church of England, wrote, on hearing of her death : 

"The shock of your tidings to me, of course, was 
great ; but, 0, 1 feel how delightful the surprise to her ! 
How much she must know now ! How much she must 
have enjoyed already ! I do not know what your opinions 
are about this ; I know what hers were, and for a long 
time, I have thought how great will be the surprise to her 
— a glorious surprise! She served the Right, that is, 
God, all her life." 

In a similar strain wrote other friends, who were 
believers in immortal life. Miss Martineau died at her 
own house at Ambleside, in 1876, aged seventy-four years. 
She expressed the secret of her life in a sentence of her 
Autobiography. 

" The real and justifiable and honorable subject of 
interest to human beings, living and dying, is the 

WELFARE OF THEIR FELLOWS, SUlTOUllding Or surviving 

them " 



202 HARRIET MARTINEAU. 

For twenty years after she had written her autobiography 
in momentary expectation of death, she continued to live 
and work for the welfare of her fellows. In her own words, 
" Literature, though a precious luxury, was not, and never 
had been, the daily bread of her life. She felt that she 
could not be happy, or in the best way useful, if the declin- 
ing years of her life were spent in lodgings in the morning 
and drawing-rooms in the evening. A quiet home of her 
own, and some few dependent on her for their domestic 
welfare, she believed to be essential to every true woman's 
peace of mind ; and she chose her plan of life accordingly." 
She lived in the country, built a house, and tried her hand 
successfully on a farm of two acres. She exerted herself 
for the good of her neighbors, and devised schemes to 
remedy local mischiefs. Her servants found in her a friend 
as well as a mistress. 

Her long and busy life bears the constant impress of two 
leading characteristics — industry and sincerity. In the 
brief autobiographical sketch, left to be published in the 
London Daily News, to which she had contributed alto- 
gether sixteen hundred important articles, she gives this 
curiously candid judgment of herself, which is more correct 
than many of her judgments of others: "Her original 
power was nothing more than was due to earnestness and 
intellectual clearness within a certain range. "With small 
imaginative and suggestive powers, and therefore nothing 
approaching to genius, she could see clearly what she did 
see, and give a clear expression to what she had to say. In 
short, she could popularize while she could neither discover 
nor invent." 

Her infirmity of deafness probably enabled her to accora* 
plish the immense amount of literary work which she did, 
since it withdrew her from many distractions. The cheerful 
and unobtrusive spirit with which she bore her infirmity 
remains an example and encouragement to her fellow- 
Bufferers. 



HARRIET MARTINEAU. 203 

Her years of lingering illness proved a time of quiet 
enjoyment to her, being soothed by family and social love 
and care and sympathy. In the words of her biographer, 
Mrs. M. W. Chapman, a woman of kindred spirit: 

"If, instead of dying so slowly, she had died as she 
could have wished and thought to have done, without delay, 
what a treasure of wise counsels, what a radiance of noble 
deeds, what a spirit of love and of power, what brave vic- 
torious battle to the latest hour for all things good and 
true, had been lost to posterity ! What an example of 
more than resignation, of that ready, glad acceptance of a 
lingering and painful death which made the sight a bless- 
ing to every witness, had been lost to the surviving genera- 
tion/' 



THE WIFE OF LAFAYETTE. 

THEY have in Europe a mysterious thing called rank, 
which exerts a powerful spell even over the minds 
of republicans, who neither approve nor understand it. 

We saw a proof of its power when the Prince of Wales 
visited New York some years ago. He was neither hand- 
some, nor gifted, nor wise, nor learned, nor anything else 
which, according to the imperfect light of reason, makes 
a fair claim to distinction. But how we crowded to catch 
a sight of him ! In all my varied and long experience of 
New York crowds and receptions, I never saw a popular 
movement that went down quite as deep as that. I saw 
aged ladies sitting in chairs upon the sidewalk hour after 
hour, waiting to see that youth go by — ladies whom no 
other pageant would have drawn from their homes. 
Almost every creature that could walk was out to see him. 

Mr. Gladstone is fifty times the man the Prince of 
Wales can ever be. Mr. Tennyson, Mr. Bright, George 
Eliot, Mr. Darwin, might be supposed to represent Eng- 
land better than he. But all of these eminent persons in 
a coach together would not have called forth a tenth part 
of the crowd that cheered the Prince of Wales from the 
Battery to Madison Square. There is a mystery in this 
which every one may explain according to his ability ; 
but the fact is so important that no one can understand 
history who does not bear it in mind. 

The importance of Lafayette in the Revolutionary War 
was chiefly due to the mighty prestige of his rank — not his 

204 



THE WIFE OF LAFAYETTE. 20$ 

rank as a major-general, but his imaginary, intangible 
rank as marquis. His coming here in 1777, a young man 
of twenty, was an event which interested two continents ; 
and it was only his rank which made it of the slightest 
significance. The sage old Franklin knew this very well 
when he consented to his coming, and wrote a private 
note to General Washington suggesting that the young 
nobleman should not be much hazarded in battle, but 
kept rather as an ornamental appendage to the cause. 
He proved indeed to be a young man of real merit — a 
brave, zealous, disinterested, and enterprising soldier — one 
who would have made his way and borne an honorable 
part if he had not been a marquis. But, after all, his 
rank served the cause better than any nameless youth 
could have served it. 

I met only the other day a striking illustration of this 
fact, one that showed the potent spell which his mere 
rank exerted over the minds of the Indians. On coming 
here early in the Revolutionary War, he performed a 
most essential service which only a French nobleman 
could have rendered. It was a terrible question in 1777, 
which side the Six Nations would take in the strife. 
These tribes, which then occupied the whole of central 
and western New York, being united in one confederacy, 
could have inflicted enormous damage upon the frontier 
settlements if they had sided against Congress. Lafayette 
went among them ; and they, too, were subject to the 
spell of his rank, which is indeed most powerful over bar- 
barous minds. He made a talk to them. He explained, 
as far as he could, the nature of the controversy, and told 
them that their old friends, the French, were joined, heart 
and soul, with the Americans, against their old enemies, 
the English. He prevailed. They afterwards admitted 
that it was owing to his advice, and especially his confi- 
dent prophecy of the final victory of the Americans, that 
13 



206 THE WIFE OF LAFAYETTE. 

induced so large a portion of the Six Nations to remain 
neutral. What young man of twenty, unaided by rank 
and title, could have done this service ? 

The war ended. In 1784 the marquis returned to 
America, to visit General Washington and his old com- 
rades. There was trouble again with the Six Nations, 
owing to the retention by the British of seven important 
frontier posts, Detroit, Mackinaw, Oswego, Ogdensburgh, 
Niagara, and two forts on Lake Champlain. Seeing the 
British flag still floating over these places confused the 
Indian mind, made them doubt the success of the Ameri- 
cans, and disposed them to continue a profitable warfare. 
Congress appointed three commissioners to hold a confer- 
ence with them at Fort Schuyler, which stood upon the 
site of the modern city of Rome, about a hundred miles 
west of Albany. Once more the United States availed 
themselves of the influence of Lafayette's rank over the 
Indians. The commissioners invited him to attend the 
treaty. 

In September, 1784, James Madison, then thirty-three 
years of age, started on a northward tour, and, meeting 
the marquis in Baltimore, determined to go with him to 
the treaty ground. The two young gentlemen were here 
in New York during the second week of September, and 
the marquis was the observed of all observers. Both the 
young gentlemen were undersized, and neither of them 
was good-looking ; but the presence of the French noble- 
man was an immense event, as we can still see from the 
newspapers of that and the following week. After enjoy- 
ing a round of festive attentions, they started on their 
way up the Hudson river in a barge, but not before Mr. 
Madison had sent off to the American minister in Paris 
(Mr. Jefferson) a packet of New York papers containing 
eulogistic notices of Lafayette, for the gratification of 
the French people. 



THE WIFE OF LAFAYETTE. 207 

They arrived at Fort Schuyler in due time — the mar- 
quis, Mr. Madison, the three commissioners, and other per- 
sons of note. But the Indians had no eyes and no ears 
except for the little Frenchman, twenty-seven years of 
age, whom they called Kayenlaa. The commissioners 
were nothing in their eyes, and although they did not 
enjoy their insignificance, they submitted to it with good 
grace, and asked the Indians to listen to the voice of 
Kayenlaa. He rose to speak, and soon showed himself a 
master of the Indian style of oratory. 

" In selling your lands," said he, " do not consult the 
keg of rum, and give them away to the first adventurer." 

He reminded them of his former advice, and showed 
them how his prophecies had come true. 

" My predictions," said he, have been fulfilled. Open 
your ears to the new advice of your father." 

He urged them strongly to conclude a treaty of peace 
with the Americans, and thus have plenty of the French 
articles of manufacture of which they used to be so fond. 
The leader of the war party was a young chief, equally 
famous as a warrior and as an orator, named Red Jacket, 
who replied to Lafayette in the most impassioned strain, 
calling upon his tribe to continue the war. It was thought, 
at the time, that no appeals to the reason of the Indians 
€Ould have neutralized the effect of Red Jacket's fiery 
eloquence. It was the spell of the Marquis de Lafayette's 
rank and name which probably enabled the commissioner 
to come to terms with the red men. 

" During this scene," reports Mr. Madison, " and even 
during the whole stay of the marquis, he was the only 
conspicuous figure. The commissioners were eclipsed. 
All of them probably felt it." 

The chief of the Oneida tribe admitted on this occasion 
that " the word which Lafayette had spoken to them early 
in the war had prevented them from being led to the 



20$ THE WIFE OF LAFAYETTE. 

wrong side of it." Forty -one years after this memorable 
scene — that is to say, in the year 1825 — Lafayette was at 
Buffalo; and among the persons who called upon him 
Was an aged Indian chief, much worn by time, and more 
by strong drink. He asked the marquis if he remembered 
the Indian Council at Fort Schuyler. He replied that he 
had not forgotten it, and he asked the Indian if he knew 
what had become of the young chief who had opposed 
With such burning eloquence the burying of the toma- 
hawk. 

" He is before you ! " was the old man's reply. 

" Time," said the marquis, " has much changed us both 
since that meeting." 

u Ah!" rejoined Red Jacket; " time has not been so 
hard upon you as it has upon me. It has left to you a 
fresh countenance and hair to cover your head ; while to 
me — look ! " 

Taking a handkerchief from his head he showed his 
baldness with a sorrowful countenance. To that hour 
Red Jacket had remained an enemy to everything English, 
and would not even speak the language. The general, 
who well understood the art of pleasing, humored the old 
man so far as to speak to him a few words in the Indian 
tongue, which greatly pleased the chief, and much 
increased his estimate of Lafayette's abilities. 

Such was the amazing power of that mysterious old- 
world rank which Lafayette possessed. Let us not forget, 
however, that his rank would have been of small use to 
us if that had been his only gift. In early life he was 
noted for two traits of character ; which, however, were 
not very uncommon among the young French nobles of 
the period. He had an intense desire to distinguish him- 
self in his profession, and he had a strong inclination 
toward Republican principles. He tells us whence he 
derived this tendency. At the age of nine he fell in with 



THE WIFE OF LAFAYETTE. 209 

a little book of Letters about England, written by Voltaire, 
which gave him some idea of a free country. The author 
of the Letters dwelt upon the freedom of thinking and 
printing that prevailed in England, and described the 
Exchange at London, where the Jews and Christians, 
Catholics and Protestants, Church of England men and 
Dissenters, Quakers and Deists, all mingled peacefully 
together and transacted business without inquiring into 
one another's creed. The author mentioned other things 
of the same nature, which were very strange and captivat- 
ing to the inhabitants of a country governed so despotic- 
ally as France was when Lafayette was a boy. 

The book made an indelible impression upon his eager 
and susceptible mind. He used to say in after years that 
he was u a republican at nine." He was, nevertheless, a 
member of the privileged order of his country, and if he 
had been born in another age he would in all probability 
have soon outlived the romantic sentiments of his youth, 
and run the career usual to men of his rank. 

In the summer of 1776, when he was not yet quite 
nineteen, he was stationed with his regiment at Metz, 
then a garrisoned town near the eastern frontier of France. 
An English prince, the Duke of Gloucester, brother to 
the King of England, visited this post a few weeks after 
Congress at Philadelphia had signed the Declaration of 
Independence. The French general in command at Metz 
gave a dinner to the prince, to which several officers were 
invited, Lafayette among the rest. It so happened that 
the prince received that day letters from England, which 
contained news from America. 

The news was of thrilling interest : Boston lost — Inde- 
pendence declared — mighty forces gathering to crush the 
rebellion — Washington, victorious in New England, pre- 
paring to defend New York ! News was slow in travel- 
ing then ; and hence it was that our young soldier noyr 



210 THE WIFE OF LAFAYETTE, 

heard these details for the first time at the table of his 
commanding officer. We can imagine the breathless 
interest with which he listened to the story, what ques- 
tions he asked r and how he gradually drew from the prince 
the whole interior history of the movement. Prom the 
admissions of the duke himself, he drew the inference 
that the colonists were in the right. He saw in them a 
people fighting in defence of that very liberty of which 
he had read in the English Letters of Voltaire. Before 
he rose from the table that day, the project occurred to 
his mind of going to America, and offering his services 
to the American people in their struggle for Independence. 

" My heart," as he afterwards wrote, " espoused warmly 
the cause of liberty, and I thought of nothing but of 
adding also the aid of my banner." 

And the more he thought of it, the more completely 
he was fascinated by the idea. Knowing well how such 
a scheme would appear to his prudent relations, he deter- 
mined to judge this matter for himself. He placed a new 
motto on his coat-of-arms : 

Cur non ? 

This is Latin for, Why not ? He chose those words, 
he says, because they would serve equally as an encour- 
agement to himself and a reply to others. His first step 
was to go on leave to Paris, where Silas Deane was 
already acting as the representative of Congress, secretly 
favored by the French ministry. Upon consulting two of 
his young friends, he found them enthusiastic in the same 
cause, and abundantly willing to go with him, if they 
could command the means. When, however, he sub- 
mitted the project to an experienced family friend, the 
Count de Broglie, he met firm opposition. 

" I have seen your uncle," said the count, " die in the 
wars of Italy ; I witnessed your father's death at the bat- 
tle of Minden. and I will not be accessory to the ruin of 
the only remaining branch of the family." 



THE WIFE OF LAFAYETTE. 211 

He tried in vain to dissuade the young man from a 
purpose which seemed to him most rash and chimerical. 
One person that favored his purpose was his beautiful 
young wife, already the mother of one child and soon to 
be the mother of a second. She, with the spirit and 
devotion natural to a French lady of eighteen, entered 
heartily into the very difficult business of getting off her 
young husband to win glory for both by fighting for the 
American insurgents. 

Anastasie de Noailles was her maiden name. She was 
the daughter of a house which had eight centuries of 
recorded history, and which, in each of these centuries, 
had given to France soldiers or priests of national 
importance and European renown. The eMteau of 
Noailles (near the city of Toul), portions of which date 
as far back as A. D. 1050, was the cradle of the race : 
and to-day in Paris there is a Duke de Noailles, and a 
Marquis de Noailles, descendants of that Pierre de 
Noailles who was lord t)f the old chateau three hundred 
and fifty years before America was discovered. 

Old as her family was, Mademoiselle de Noailles was 
one of the youngest brides, as her Marquis was one of the 
youngest husbands. An American company would have 
smiled to see a boy of sixteen and a half years of age, 
presenting himself at the altar to be married to a girl of 
fourteen. We must beware, however, of sitting in judg- 
ment on people of other climes and other times. Lafay- 
ette was a great match. His father had fallen in the 
battle of Minden, when the boy was two years of age, 
leaving no other heir. It is a curious fact that the. 
officer who commanded the battery from which the ball 
was fired that killed Lafayette's father, was the same 
General Phillips with whom the son was so actively 
engaged in Virginia, during the summer of 1781. 

The mother of our marquis died ten years after her 



212 THE WIFE OF LAFAYETTE. 

husband. Her father, a nobleman of great estate, soon 
followed her to the grave, and so this boy of fourteen 
inherited the estates of two important families. Madem- 
oiselle de Noallies had great rank and considerable wealth. 
It is perhaps safe to infer that she was not remarkable 
for beauty, because no one of her many eulogists claims it 
for her. Nearly all marriages among the nobility were 
then matters of bargain and interest, mutual love having 
little to do with them ; yet many marriages of that kind 
were very happy, and in all respects satisfactory. Lafay- 
ette's was one of these. The pair not only loved one 
another with ardent and sustained affection, but the mar- 
riage united the two families, and called into being 
numerous children and grandchildren. 

Imagine them married then, in April, 1774, the year in 
which the Continental Congress met at Philadelphia. 

The young husband— officer in a distinguished regi- 
ment—was not much at home during the first two years 
after his marriage ; a circumstance which was probably 
conducive to the happiness of both, for they were too 
young to be satisfied with a tranquil domestic life. 

One day in the summer of 1776 he returned suddenly 
and unexpectedly to Paris. His wife observed that some 
great matter possessed his mind. There is reason to 
believe that she was among the first to be made acquainted 
with his scheme of going to America and entering the 
service of Congress. A married girl of sixteen— the very 
age of romance— she sympathized at first with his pur- 
pose, and always kept his secret. Nine months of excite- 
ment followed, during which he went and came several 
times, often disappointed, always resolved ; until at length 
Madame de Lafayette received a letter from him, written 
on board the ship Victory, that was to convey him to 
America. 

This was in April, 1777, when already she held in her 



THE WIFE OF LAFAYETTE. 



2*3 



arms their first child, the baby Henriette, who died white 
her father was still tossed upon the ocean. It was many- 
months after his landing in America before he heard of 
his child's death, and he kept writing letter after letter in 
which he begged his wife to kiss for him the infant whose 
lips were cold in the grave. His letters to her during his 
long absences in America were full of affection and ten- 
derness. He calls her his life, his love, and his dearest- 
love. In the first letter written at sea, he tries once more 
to reconcile her to his departure. 

" If," said he, " you could know all that I have suffered 
while thus flying from all I love best in the world ! Must 
I join to this affliction the grief of hearing that you do 
not pardon me ? " 

He endeavored to convince her that he was not in the 
least danger of so much as a graze from a British bullet. 

" Ask the opinion," said he, " of all general officers — 
and these are very numerous, because having once 
obtained that height, they are no longer exposed to any 
hazards." 

Then he turned to speak of herself and of their child. 

" Henrietta," said he, " is so delightful that she has 
made me in love with little girls." 

And then he prattled on with a happy blending of good 
feeling and good humor, until the darkness of the even- 
ing obliged him to lay aside the pen, as he had prudently 
forbidden the lighting of candles on board his ship. It 
,was easy to write these long letters in the cabin of his 
vessel, but it was by no means easy to send them back 
across the ocean, traversed by English cruisers. When 
Madame de Lafayette received this letter their Henriette 
had been dead for nearly a year. He ran his career in 
America. He was domesticated with Gen. Washington. 
He was wounded at the battle of Brandy wine. He passed 
the memorable winter at Valley Forge. 



214 THE WIFE OF LAFAYETTE. 

Iii June, 1778, thirteen months after leaving home, a 
French vessel brought to America the news of the French 
alliance, and to him that of the death of his Henriette, 
and the birth of his second daughter, Anastasie. There 
is nothing in their correspondence prettier than the man- 
ner in which he speaks to her of his wound. 

" Whilst endeavoring to rally the troops," he tells her, 
"the English honored me with a musket-ball, which 
slightly wounded me in the leg — but iif^is a trifle, my 
dearest love ; the ball touched neither bone nor nerve, and 
I have escaped with the obligation of lying on my back 
for some time." 

In October, 1778, about a year and a half after his 
departure, Madame de Lafayette enjoyed the transport of 
welcoming her husband home on a leave of absence. 

Once, during the spring of 1778, she was present at a 
party at a great house in Paris, which was attended by 
the aged Voltaire, then within a few weeks of the close 
of his life. The old poet, recognizing her among the 
ladies, knelt at her feet, and complimented her upon the 
brilliant and wise conduct of her young husband in 
America. She received this act of homage with graceful 
modesty. When Lafayette again returned, at the end of 
the war, we can truly say he was the most shining person- 
age in France. At court the young coupie were over- 
whelmed with flattering attentions, and the king promoted 
the marquis to the rank of field-marshal of the French 
army. During the next seven years, Madame de Lafay- 
ette was at the height of earthly felicity. Her two 
daughters, Anastasie and Virginie, and her son, George 
Washington, were affectionate and promising children, 
and there seemed nothing wanting to her lot that could 
render it happier or more distinguished. 

Then came the storm of the French Revolution. Both 
husband and wife were cast down before it. While ho 



THE WIFE OF LAFAYETTE. 21$ 

was immured in an Austrian dungeon, she, with her two 
daughters, was confined in one of the prisons of Paris, 
along with other gentle victims of the Terror. Many of 
her friends went from her embrace to the guillotine. She, 
fortunately, escaped the axe, and, a few months after the 
death of Robespierre, she was released, and prepared at 
once to penetrate to the remote fortress in which her 
husband was confined. She sent her son to America, con- 
signing him to the care of President Washington, who 
accepted the trust, and superintended the education of the 
lad with the affectionate care of a father. The mother 
and her daughters, in September, 1795, set out for Vienna, 
she calling herself Mrs. Motier, and giving herself out as 
an English lady traveling in disguise to escape pursuit. 

Upon reaching Vienna she obtained an audience of the 
Emperor, and implored her husband's release; alleging 
truly that he had been Marie Antoinette's best friend in 
France. The Emperor's reply was, "My hands are tied." 
He refused to release the General, but permitted Madame 
de Lafayette and her daughters to share his confinement. 
For twenty-two months they remained in prison with him, 
suffering the horrors of a detention, which was cruelly 
aggravated by superserviceable underlings. Anastasie, 
the elder daughter, was then sixteen years of age, and 
Virginie was thirteen. Though they, too, were subjected 
to very rigorous treatment, they preserved their health 
and cheerfulness. The mother suffered extremely, and 
more than once she was at death's door. When, in Sep- 
tember, 1797, the doors of the fortress of Olmutz were 
opened, she could scarcely walk to the carriage which bore 
them to liberty. They made their way to Hamburg, where 
they were all received into the family of John Parish, the 
American consul. Mr. Parish afterwards described the 
scene : 

" An immense crowd announced their arrival. The 
streets were lined, and my house was soon filled with 



2l6 THE WIFE OF LAFAYETTE. 

people. A lane was formed to let the prisoners pass to 
my room. Lafayette led the way, and was followed by 
his infirm lady and two daughters. He flew into my 
arms ; his wife and daughters clung to me. The silence 
was broken by an exclamation of, — 

" ' My friend ! My dearest friend ! My deliverer ! See 
the work of your generosity ! My poor, poor wife, hardly 
able to support herself I ' 

"And indeed she was not standing, but hanging on my 
arm, bathed in tears, while her two lovely girls had hold 
of the other. There was not a dry eye in the room. 

"I placed her on a sofa. She sobbed and wept much, 
and could utter but few words. Again the Marquis came 
to my arms, his heart overflowing with gratitude. I 
never saw a man in such complete ecstasy of body and 
mind." 

Madame de Lafayette never recovered her health. She 
lived ten years longer, and died December 24, 1807, 
aged forty-seven years, leaving her daughters and her son 
happily established. An American who visited, twenty 
years after, the Chateau of La Grange, which was the 
abode of General Lafayette during the last forty years 
of his life, found there a numerous company of her 
descendants, a son, two daughters, and twelve grand- 
children, forming a circle which he described in glowing 
terms of admiration. The house was full of America 
On the walls were portraits of Washington, Franklin, 
Morris, Adams, Jefferson, and a painting of the siege of 
Yorktown. Objects brought from America, or received 
thence as gifts, were seen everywhere, and there was one 
room containing nothing but American things, which the 
General called by the name " America." There was an 
American ice-house in the garden, and groves of American 
trees in the park. It was one of the most estimable and 
happy families in France. Alas ! that the fond mother 
and the devoted wife should have been wanting to it. 




BETSEY PATTEKSON. 



BETSY PATTERSON, OTHERWISE MADAME JEROME 
BONAPARTE, OF BALTIMORE. 

IN the spring of 1766, a poor boy of fourteen, named 
William Patterson, from the north of Ireland, landed 
at Philadelphia. He was the son of a small farmer, 
a Protestant, one of that conquering Scotch-Irish race 
which has contributed so many distinguished persons to 
the history of the United States. The boy obtained a 
place in the counting-house of an Irish merchant in Phil- 
adelphia, and served him with singular diligence and 
fidelity. He acted upon the principle of making himself 
valuable to his employer. 

At twenty-one he was in business as a merchant. When: 
he had been established about two years the American 
Revolution broke out, threatening to put a stop to all 
business. William Patterson availed himself of the crisis 
to make his own fortune, and, at the same time, to serve 
his adopted country. He loaded two small vessels with 
tobacco, indigo, and other American products, investing 
in the speculation the whole of his small capital, and sailed 
for France. Both vessels reached France in safety. He 
sold the cargoes, invested the proceeds in warlike stores, 
of which General Washington was in direst need, and 
set sail for home. On the way he touched at St. Eustatius, 
an island of the Dutch West Indies, then a place of great 
trade, containing about twenty-five thousand inhabitants. 
Seeing his chance, he remained on this island, and sent 
his vessels to Philadelphia. 219 



220 BETSY PATTERSON. 

They were both so lucky as to escape the cruisers, and 
to arrive in March, 1776, when the army had scarcely 
powder enough to conceal from the enemy that they were 
short of powder. We can imagine that these two cargoes 
of ammunition were welcome enough, and sold at a good 
price. The vessels appear to have returned to the West 
Indies, where William Patterson remained two or three 
years, sending supplies home as best he could, until the 
alliance with Prance put an end to the scarcity of military 
stores. He then prepared to return. In June, 1778, he 
landed in Baltimore, then a town of three or four thou- 
sand inhabitants, bringing with him, in gold and 'mer- 
chandise, a hundred thousand dollars, the result of five 
years' business. 

He was then twenty-six years of age. Upon looking at 
Baltimore with the eyes of a long-headed man of busi 
ness, observing its situation, and perceiving the necessity 
of its becoming one of the first cities of the world, he 
concluded to settle there. With one half of his fortune 
he bought lots and lands in and near the city, as Astor 
did in New York a few years later. With the other half 
of his capital, including his little fleet of small vessels, 
he went into the business of a shipping merchant. 

During the next twenty years the commerce of the 
infant republic had a most rapid development, particularly 
while supplying the warring powers of Europe with provi- 
sions. William Patterson in those twenty years accumu- 
lated what was then considered an immense fortune, 
President Jefferson, in 1804, spoke of him as probably 
the richest person in the United States except Charles 
Carrol of Carrollton, who inherited lands and slaves. His 
fortune, too, was a growing one, since he continued to 
purchase lands near the city, that were certain to rise in 
value with the increase of the place. 

After settling in Baltimore he married a young lady 



BETSY PATTERSON. 221 

named Dorcas Spear, and soon became a family man of 
the old-fashioned type. The Scotch-Irish have the family 
instinct very strong, and are apt to center all their hopes 
of happiness in a home. He was a man of quiet and 
regular habits ; during a long life he scarcely ever left 
Baltimore, either on business or pleasure. He said once, 
in speaking of his own history, that ever since he had 
had a house of his own it had been his invariable rule to 
be up last at night, and to see that the fires and lights 
were in a safe condition before going to bed. Like other 
rich men, he served as bank director and president, and 
held other offices of a similar character from time to 
time. 

The most fortunate individuals — and few men were 
more fortunate than this Baltimore merchant — have 
their share of trouble. Calamity came to him in the 
bewitching guise of a most beautiful daughter, born in the 
early years of his wedded life. This was that Elizabeth 
Patterson Bonaparte, whose recent death at the age of 
ninety-four has called attention anew to the strange 
romance of her early life. In 1803, at eighteen years of 
age, she was the pride of her father's home, and the 
prettiest girl in Baltimore, a place noted then, as now, for 
the beauty of its women. If the early portraits of her 
are correct, the word pretty describes her very well. 
There was a girlish and simple expression in her counte- 
nance at variance with her character, for, with all her 
faults, she was a woman of force. 

In the fall of 1803 this Baltimore beauty attended the 
races near the city, and there she met her fate. Jerome 
Bonaparte of the French navy, Napoleon's youngest 
brother — that brother whom he hoped would accomplish 
on the ocean what he had done on the land — was at the 
races that day. Napoleon wanted a great admiral to 
cope with Nelson and conquer the British navy, and he 



222 BETSY PATTERSON. 

had flattered himself that this favorite brother could be 
the man. If beauty of form and face could make a great 
commander, Jerome would have been a promising candi- 
date : for on the day that he rode out to the Baltimore 
races in 1803, he was one of the most superb looking 
young men then living. 

They met ! All the world knows what followed. 

William Patterson, with his sturdy Scottish sense, per- 
ceived the utter incongruity and absurdity of such a 
match. He opposed it by every means in his power. He 
used both authority and persuasion. He sent her out of 
town, but she returned more infatuated than before. At 
length, discovering that both of them were set upon the 
marriage, he gave a reluctant consent ; and married they 
were, by the Roman Catholic bishop of Baltimore, her 
father taking every precaution to fulfill all the forms 
which the laws of both nations required. The Bonaparte 
family, with one exception, approved the match, and 
several of them congratulated the newly married pah 
That one exception was Napoleon, the head of the family, 
First Consul, and about to declare himself Emperor. He 
refused to recognize the marriage. When, at length, 
Jerome stood in his presence to plead the case of his 
young and lovely wife, who was about to become a 
mother, Napoleon addressed him thus : 

" So, sir, you are the first of the family who has shame- 
fully abandoned his post. It will require many splendid 
actions to wipe off that stain from your reputation. As 
to your love affair with your little girl, I pay no regard 
to it." 

And he never did. Jerome had the baseness to 
abandon his wife, and she stooped to accept from Napo- 
leon an income of twelve thousand dollars a year, which 
was paid to her as long as the hand of that coarse soldier 
had the wasting of the French peoples' earnings. She 



BETSY PATTERSON. 223 

Came back to Baltimore with her child, one of the most 
wretched of women. She thought that marrying- into 
this family of Corsican robbers had elevated her in " rank " 
above her wise and virtuous father ! She wrote to that 
father many years after, describing her feelings at this 
time. 

" I hated and loathed a residence in Baltimore so mucn, 
that when I thought I was to spend my life there, I tried 
to screw my courage up to the point of committing 
suicide. My cowardice, and only my cowardice, prevented 
my exchanging Baltimore for the grave. After having 
married a person of the high rank I did, it became 
impossible for me ever to bend my spirit to marry any 
one who had been my equal before my marriage, and it 
became impossible for me ever to be contented in a 
country where there exists no nobility." 

She never, to the close of her long life of ninety-four 
years, ceased to cherish such sentiments. In 1849, she 
wrote from Baltimore to the celebrated Irish authoress, 
Lady Morgan, a letter in which she gives an amusing 
revelation of her interior self. 

" I consider it," she wrote, " a good fortune for myself 
that you inhabit London. To enjoy again your agreeable 
society will be my tardy compensation for the long, weary, 
unintellectual years inflicted on me in this my dull 
native country, to which I have never owed advantages, 
pleasures, or happiness. I owe nothing to my country ; 
no one expects me to be grateful for the evil chance of 
having been born here. I shall emancipate myself, par 
la grace de Dieu, about the middle of July next ; and I 
will either write to you before I leave New York, or 
immediately after my arrival at Liverpool. 

" I had given up all correspondence with my friends in 

Europe during my vegetation in this Baltimore. What 

could I write about except the fluctuations in the security 
14 



224 BZTSY PATTERSON. 

and consequent prices of American stocks. There is 
nothing here worth attention or interest save the money 
market. Society, conversation, friendship, belong to older 
countries, and are not yet cultivated in any part of the 
United States which I have visited. You ought to thank 
your stars for your European birth ; you may believe me 
when I assure you that it is only distance from republics 
which lends enchantment to the view of them. I hope 
that about the middle of next July I shall begin to pat 
the Atlantic between the advantages and honors of 
democracy and myself. France, je Vespere dans son 
interet, is in a state of transition, and will not let her 
brilliant society be put under an extinguisher nommee la 
Republique. 

" The emperor hurled me back on what I most hated 
on earth — my Baltimore obscurity ; even that shock could 
not divest me of the admiration I felt for his genius and 
glory. I have ever been an imperial Bonapartiste quand 
rneme, and I do feel enchanted at the homage paid by 
six millions of voices to his memory, in voting an imperial 
president ; le prestige die nom has, therefore, elected the 
prince, who has my best wishes, my most ardent hopes 
for an empire. I never could endure universal suffrage 
until it elected the nephew of an emperor for the chief of 
a republic ; and I shall be charmed with universal suffrage 
once more if it insists upon their president of France 
becoming a monarch. I am disinterested personally. It 
is not my desire ever to return to France. 

" My dear Lady Morgan, do you know that, having been 
cheated out of the fortune which I ought to have inherited 
from my late rich and unjust parent, I have only ten 
thousand dollars, or two thousand pounds English, which 
conveniently I can disburse annually. You talk of my 
* princely income, 5 which convinces me that you are 
ignorant of the paucity of my means. I have all my life 



BETSY PATTERSON. 225 

had poverty to contend with, pecuniary difficulties to 
torture and mortify me ; and but for my industry and 
energy, and my determination to conquer at least a decent 
sufficiency to live on in Europe, I might have remained as 
poor as you saw me in the year 1816." 

She speaks in this strange letter of having been dis- 
inherited by her father. This was not quite true, although 
the poor, deluded woman was the plague of her father's 
declining years. It is but common charity to think that 
the acuteness of her mortification had impaired in some 
degree her reason. She spent many years hankering 
after that false European life, and heaping every kind of 
contempt upon her native land. She appears to have been 
incapable of human affection. She abandoned her father 
and his home, to roam around among the titled idlers of 
Europe, xit a time when he peculiarly needed her presence 
and aid. He wrote to her thus in 1815, soon after the 
death of his wife: 

" What will the world think of a woman who had 
recently followed her mother and last sister to the grave, 
and quit her father's house, where duty and necessity call 
for her attention as the only female of the family left, 
and thought proper to abandon all to seek for admiratiou 
in foreign countries ?" 

The old man intimates that he, too, regarded her as a 
person not quite sound in mind. He died in 1835, aged 
eighty-three years, leaving an immense estate, and the 
longest will ever recorded in Baltimore. He did not dis" 
inherit his daughter, Betsy ; but left her a few small 
houses and lots; which, however, greatly increased in 
value after his death. He explains the smallness of his 
bequest thus : 

" The conduct of my daughter Betsy has through life 
been so disobedient that in no instance has she ever con- 
sulted my opinions or feelings ; indeed, she has caused 



226 BETSY PATTERSON. 

me more anxiety and trouble than all my other children 
put together, and her folly and misconduct have occasioned 
me a train of expense that first and last has cost me 
much money. Under such circumstances it would not he 
reasonable, just, or proper that she should inherit and 
participate in an equal proportion with my other children 
m an equal division of my estate ; considering, however, 
the weakness of human nature, and that she is still my 
daughter, it is my will and pleasure to provide for her as 
follows, viz. : I give and devise to my said daughter Betsy, 
first, the house and lot on the east side of South Street, 
where she was born, and which is now occupied by Mr. 
Duncan, the shoemaker. Secondly, the houses and lots on 
the corner of Market Street bridge, now occupied by Mr. 
Tulley, the chairmaker, and Mr. Priestly, the cabinet- 
maker. Thirdly, the three new adjoining brick houses, 
and the one on the corner of Market and Frederick 
Streets. Fourthly, two new brick houses and lots on Gay 
Street, near Griffith's bridge ; for and during the term of 
the natural life of my said daughter Betsy ; and after 
her death I give, devise and bequeath the same to my 
grandson, Jerome Napoleon Bonaparte." 

She survived her father many years, a well-known 
figure in Baltimore, a brisk old lady with a red umbrella 
and* a black velvet bonnet, with an income of a hundred 
thousand dollars a year, but living in a boarding-house on 
two thousand. A lady asked her what religion she pre- 
ferred. She said that if she adopted any religion it 
would be the Roman Catholic, because "that was a 
religion of kings — a royal religion." Her niece said: 
" You would not give up Presbyterianism ? " To which 
she replied : 

" The only reason I would not is, that I should not like 
to give up the stool my ancestors had sat upon." 

She died in April, 1879, and left a million and a half 



BETSY PATTERSON. 227 

of dollars to her two grandsons. Her letters have been 
published, and they exhibit to us a character unlike that 
of any other American woman who has been delineated 
in print. She once said, with equal sincerity and truth, 
that, in the course of her experience of life, she had 
found but one friend that was always faithful, namely, 
her Purse. Such a woman can have no other, and to that 
friend she was faithful unto death. 



SOME LADIES OF THE OLD SCHOOL. 

WE are often favored with remarks eulogizing trie 
ladies of the old school at the expense of ladies 
of the present day. I do not doubt that a vast majority 
of the ladies whom our ancestors loved were estimable 
beings; but, then, folly is of no age; it belongs to all 
times, to every race, and to both sexes. Ladies of the 
old school ! How old? How far must we go back before 
we come to those admirable and faultless creatures ? 

Shall we say the last century? People who enjoyed 
the personal acquaintance of ladies who lived a hundred 
years ago do not appear to have thought so highly of them 
as some living persons do who know them only by report. 
Consider one of their habits. What are we to think of 
their passionate, reckless, universal gambling? Down to 
1790, gambling was so universal in the higher circles* 
that we may almost say society and gambling were 
synonymous terms. There appears to have been high 
play at every court and mansion every night. It was the 
regular resource among the idle classes for getting through 
the evenings. Fox, whom Nature formed to be the 
foremost Englishman of his time, — Pox, the Prince Hal 
of politics, — lost two hundred thousand pounds at cards 
by the time he was of age ; and his father had to pay most 
of it. The card-table was spoken of sometimes as a 
school for the acquisition of nerve, fortitude, and good 
temper, since it was required of every one to bear losses 
with an appearance of cheerfulness. But human nature 
228 



SOME LADIES OF THE OLD SCHOOL. 229 

not unf requently triumphed over the restraints of decorum, 
as well as over the rules of the game. There were high' 
born dowagers, with whom it was a costly honor to play. 
Nor were losses always borne with equanimity. A writer 
of the last century relates a terrific scene which he wit- 
nessed in a London drawing-room. 

Two elderly ladies were seated at a table, playing for 
pretty high stakes. Without going near them, it was 
easy to tell which was losing and which was winning, 
from the expression of their faces. At length, the game 
suddenly ended in a crushing disaster for one of them. 
The author describes the sweet and pleasant manner 
in which the gamester of fifty years' standing bore her 
loss. " Her face," he says, " was of a universal crimson: 
and tears of rage seemed ready to start into her eyes. At 
that moment, as Satan would have it, her opponent, a 
dowager whose hair and eyebrows were as white as those 
of an Albiness, triumphantly and briskly demanded pay- 
ment for the two black aces. 

" ' Two black aces ! ' answered the loser in a voice 
almost unintelligible by passion. ' Here, take the money; 
though, instead, I wish I could give you two black eyes, 
you old white cat ! ' accompanying the wish with a ges- 
ture that threatened a possibility of its execution. The 
stately, starched old lady, who, in her eagerness to receive 
her winnings, had half risen from her chair, sunk back 
into it as though she had really received the blow. She 
literally closed her eyes and opened her mouth, and for 
several moments thus remained fixed by the magnitude 
of her horror." 

We hear a good deal about the high-breeding and 
invincible politeness of the old time. There was more 
ceremony ; there was more deference paid by poor to rich, 
by employed to employer, by commoner to lord, by citizens 
to their public servants ; but cift*er a wide survey of the 



230 SOME LADIES OF THE OLD SCHOOL. 

records of the past, and noting hundreds of indications 
too trifling for mention, I am fully persuaded, that in our 
hourly intercourse with one another as mere human 
beings, without regard to rank or caste, we are more 
polite than our ancestors, — more generally considerate 
of one another's feelings, rights, and dignity. 

I was turning over in jScribner's, some time ago, " The 
Correspondence of the first Earl of Malmesbury." Good 
heavens! what savages some of the ladies of England 
appear in those volumes of familiar letters! Think of 
the ladies in the Pump-Room at Bath getting into a free 
fight, tearing one another's hair and clothes, so that the 
Riot Act was read, and read in vain ! We don't do so at 
Saratoga. We hear much now-a-days of the girl of the 
period. There was a Woman's Club in London composed 
of ladies of rank, who came and went at all hours of the 
night, ate, drank (drank deeply too), played for high 
stakes, talked loud, showed brawny arms, and boasted in 
loud, coarse voices of their physical prowess. A new 
dance came up, which these strong-minded and strong- 
limbed sisters much affected. It was for two couples, who 
began the dance by a quarrel ; next they fought a pair of 
duels, firing real pistols ; then the couples danced a recon- 
ciliation figure, which ended in an embrace ; and the dance 
concluded with kisses, well-timed and loud, that went off 
like the pistols employed in the fight. The dress of these 
high-born barbarians was as monstrous as their manners. 
We read of one lady, who, on seeing the Duchess of 
Devonshire enter a room with two feathers sixteen inches 
high nodding from the lofty summit of her head-dress, 
was stricken with jealousy, and thenceforth took no com- 
fort in life until her undertaker gave his promise to 
send her two taller plumes as soon as one of his hearses 
came home from a job. 

With regard to decency, as we understand the term, 



SOME LADIES OF THE OLD SCHOOL. 27,1 

it did not exist. Consider the anecdote related by Han- 
nah More, bearing upon this point. In her old age, she 
had a enriosity to read again a novel which had been a 
favorite in families in her youth, and which she had her- 
self often read at home to the family circle. Upon get- 
ting the book she was utterly amazed and confounded 
at its indecency : at eighty years, she could not read to 
herself a work which at sixteen she had read aloud to 
father, mother, and friends. 

Dr. Franklin's paper, The Pennsylvania Gazette, the 
best paper ever published in the Colonies, and among the 
most decent, contains fifty things which no newspaper 
now-a-days, not the most unscrupulous of all, would dare 
or wish to publish. Among the shorter tales of Voltaire, 
there are several which he wrote at the request of ladies, 
to be used by them in liquidation of forfeits incurred in 
games. These tales were read aloud, by or for the ladies, 
to the whole circle at the cMteau or palace ; of tener palace 
than chateau, some of them being written for German 
princesses. Those tales we should consider quite inde- 
cent, all of them. No periodical in Europe or America 
would publish them. The same author used to lend manu- 
script cantos of his "Pucelle," a poem of incredible 
freedom, to the most distinguished ladies in Europe, who 
regarded the loan as an homage to their taste and discre- 
tion, and sat up at night making copies for preservation- 
He read that poem to the Queen of Prussia, mother of 
Frederick the Great ; and one day, upon looking up, he 
saw the queen's daughter listening on the sly. The queen, 
too, saw her a moment after, and exchanged meaning 
smiles with Voltaire, but did not send her away ; and the 
reading went on as before, the flavor of the jests being 
more keenly relished because shared by virgin ears. 

Women, indeed, were rather fonder of such literature 
than men, and for an obvious reason. Obscene jests, 



232 SOME LADIES OF THE OLD SCHOOL. 

indecent tales, and all that constitutes what Miss Wolls- 
tonecraft styles " bodily wit," are the natural resource of 
ignorant, idle minds ; and, a hundred years ago, the minds 
of nearly all ladies were ignorant and idle. I assert, 
without hesitation, that the ordinary intercourse of human 
beings as human beings is more decent, more dignified, 
more kindly and more sincere, than it was. 

For two or three months one summer, I lived at a beach 
on the coast of Maine, where, in all, during the season, 
there must have been as many as two thousand persons, 
of all sorts and conditions, of all religions and nationali- 
ties. I can almost say that there was not a rude or 
ungracious act done by one of them. Nobody was stuck 
up; nobody made any parade of wealth, or pretended 
to any superiority on account of his family or occupation. 
At the same time proper privacy was not intruded upon. 
Every one seemed to wish well to others, and the utmost 
friendliness prevailed at all times. Cards every evening, 
but no gambling ; dancing every evening, but all over at 
eleven o'clock ; plenty of hilarity, but scarcely any drink- 
ing. All was pleasant, cheerful, elegant, decorous, free. 
Warm discussions upon politics and religion, but no intol- 
erance or ill temper. I say with the boldness arising 
from long research, that such a company, gathered for a 
similar purpose, in a similar place, during the last century, 
would have been less innocent, less decorous, less polite. 
There would have been high play, deep drinking, love 
intrigues, and no meeting of rich and not rich, distin- 
guished and undistinguished, on terms of friendly equality. 

Another fact: In a drawer of the bowling alley, I 
found one day a Latin dictionary, a Livy, and a Vergil ; 
and I discovered, a few days after, that they belonged to 
the boy who had charge of the alley. He was preparing 
for college! When no one was playing, out came his 
Vergil from the drawer ; and he kept at it till the next 



SOME LADIES OP THE OLD SCHOOL. 233 

customer strolled in. And the best of it was, that no one 
saw anything extraordinary in this. If he came to a pas- 
sage he could not translate, he would bring his book to 
the piazza, and get assistance from some of the gentlemen 
there who were learned in the classics of antiquity; all 
of which seemed quite natural and ordinary. 

Then as to chivalry — the grand politeness, the Sidney 
style, — supposed by some to be extinct. In our war, 
many a Sidney served in the ranks ; one act of one of 
whom was this : Twenty men, thirsty and wounded, were 
waiting on a hot day, after a battle near Chattanooga, their 
turn to be attended to. One of the gentlemen of the 
Christian Commission came up at length, bearing the 
priceless treasure of a pail of water and a tin cup. He 
handed the first cupful to the soldier who seemed most to 
need the cooling, cleansing liquid; for he was badly 
wounded in the mouth, from which blood was oozing. 

" No," said this sublime Sidney of the ranks : " I must 
drink last ; for, you know, I shall make the cup bloody." 

And there were a thousand men in that army who 
would have done the same. In this country certainly, and, 
I think, throughout Christendom, if the spirit of caste 
still lives in vulgar minds, it is generally recognized as 
vulgarity ; it hides itself, and is ashamed. 

" Would you believe it ? " said Horace Walpole, " when 
an artist is patronized now-a-days, he thinks it is he who 
confers distinction ! " 

The courtly old pensioner evidently thought that this 
was mere insolence and absurdity. This man, who had 
lived all his life on the bounty of the English people — on 
an unearned pension of four thousand pounds a year, pro- 
cured for him by his father, Sir Robert, — had not the 
slightest doubt of his intrinsic superiority to Sir Joshua 
Reynolds, Dr. Johnson, Fanny Burney, Garrick,or Handel ! 
Nor had any other man of his order in Europe. Some 



234 SOME LADIES OF THE OLD SCHOOL. 

one was congratulating the great French actor, Leakin, 
upon the glory and the money which he had gained dur- 
ing a prosperous season. 

" As to money," said he, " we do not get as much as 
people think. My income, at the most, is only ten or 
twelve thousand francs a year." 

" What ! " cried a young nobleman, " a vile actor not 
content with twelve thousand francs a year ; while I who 
am in the king's service, who sleep upon a cannon, and 
shed my blood for my country, — I am only too happy to 
get a thousand francs ! " 

The actor, inwardly boiling with fury, quietly said : 

" Do you count it for nothing that you dare to speak to 
to me in that manner ? " 

Paris, it is said, marveled at the audacity of the vet- 
eran actor, not at all at the insolence of the boy lieutenant. 
All thatj let us hope, is over forever, We may boast, 
too, that an approach has been made to a substantial 
equality of human conditions and opportunities. Bishop 
■Kip tells us, in a very agreeable article, how tranquil, 
dignified, and captivating New York society was in the 
olden time. Very well. But he gives us to understand 
in the same article, that to maintain one of those refined, 
dignified families, required an estate ten or fifteen miles 
square ; and there were only about fifty of them in the 
whole vast Province of New York. We are also reminded, 
now and then, of the first families of Virginia, and the 
grand life they lived ; but it took a plantation of five 
thousand acres, five hundred slaves, and fifty house ser 
vants, to keep up one establishment. We must learn to 
live beautifully at a much cheaper rate than that ; and I 
feel assured that we are learning it. 

I went over a clock-factory, in Connecticut, some time 
ago — a spacious and handsome edifice, filled with intelli- 
gent, polite iden and women doing clean, inviting work; 



SOME LADIES OP THE OLD SCHOOL. 235 

the water-wheel performing all that was hard and labori- 
ous. The only important difference I could discover 
between the proprietor and the workmen was, that the 
men came to work every morning at seven, and the owner 
at half-past six. All of them, in fact, came an hour too 
soon and stayed an hour too late. The workmen lived in 
pretty cottages — their own, if they choose to buy, — with 
good, large gardens around them. Their children went 
to the same school — common school and high school — as 
his children, and had access to the same library and 
lyceum. All lived in the same sweet, umbrageous village, 
and looked out upon the same circle of wood-crowned 
mountains ; nor did there appear to be in the place a mind 
small enough to hold the barbaric idea, that one man 
could be higher than another because he has more money, 
or earns his livelihood by a different kind of work. 

Mr. Emerson, in speaking of an improvident marriage, 
says: "Millenium has come and no groceries." I said 
to myself, as I strolled about this village, "Here is a fore- 
taste of millenium, and groceries in abundance. Here 
are ladies and gentlemen, not of the old school, who are 
living the polite and intelligent life upon eight and twelve 
dollars a week." 

Ladies of the present day themselves lament that they 
should be so little able to resist the tyranny of fashion* 
Ladies of the old school were more submissive to fashion 
than they, without lamenting it. Let me say that, of all 
tyrannies, the most ancient and the most universal is that 
of fashion. It began with the beginning of civilization, 
and it is precisely in the most civilized nations that its 
control extends to the greatest variety of details. Phi- 
losophers laugh at it ; but show me, if you can, a phi- 
losopher who is philosopher enough to wear in broad day- 
light his grandfather's Sunday hat! Is it not a good 
hat ? It is an excellent hat. The soft and silken fur of 



236 SOME LADIES OF THE OLD SCHOOL. 

the beaver covers it ; it is lined with the finest leather ; 
it glistens in the sun with a resplendent gloss ; it is no 
uglier in form than the stove-pipe of to-day ; it has all 
the properties of a good covering for the head. The 
original proprietor wore it with pride, and cherished it 
with care in a dust-tight bandbox, in which it has reposed 
unharmed for fifty years. What is the matter with this 
superior hat, that a man capable of marching up to the 
cannon's mouth shrinks with dismay from wearing it a 
mile on a fine afternoon in the street of his native city ? 

The hat is simply out of fashion ; nothing more. The 
present owner knows that, if he were to wear it, his 
friends would take him for a madman, his creditors would 
fear for his solvency, and the boys would set him down as 
a quack doctor. So rooted, so unconquerable in this 
tyranny, which many of us deride, and all of us obey ! 

I said it is the oldest of our tyrants. In Egyptian 
tombs, which were ancient when Antony wooed Cleopatra, 
there have been found many evidences that Egyptian 
ladies were as assiduous devotees of fashion as the fondest 
inspector of fashion-plates can now be. In the British 
Museum you may inspect the implements of Egyptian 
fashion conveniently displayed. There are neat little 
bottles made to hold the coloring matter used by the 
ladies of Egypt for painting their cheeks and eyebrows. 
Some of these vessels have four or five cells or compart- 
ments, each of which contained liquid of a different 
shade for different portions of the face. These were 
applied with a kind of long pin or bodkin, several of 
which have been brought to this country. 

Professor W. H. Flower, a distinguished member of 
the Royal Society of London, has recently published a 
a little book called " Fashion in Deformity," in which he 
mentions several ways in which ladies torment, as well 
as deform themselves, in obedience to the tyranny of 






SOME LADIES OP THE OLD SCHOOL. 237 

fashion. He passes over Egypt ; perhaps because of the 
superabundance of material illustrating his subject which 
the Egyptian collections present to view. If he had* con- 
fined his work to such a testimony as the Egyptian tombs 
have yielded, he could have made a volume ten times the 
size of the modest discourse with which he has been so 
good as to favor us. One of the absurd Egyptian lashions 
appears to have been of some service. Herodotus tells 
us that, when he was on his travels, he once walked ove~ 
a battle-field where the Egyptians and the Persians had 
fought some years before. 

" I observed," he says, " that the skulls of the Persians 
were so soft that you could perforate them with a small 
pebble, while those of the Egyptians were so strong that 
with difficulty you could break them with a large stone." 

Upon inquiring into the cause of this, he was informed 
that it was owing to the different head fashions of Egypt 
and Persia. In Egypt it was the fashion for mothers to 
shave the heads even of young children, leaving only a 
lock or two in front, behind, and one on each side ; and 
while thus shorn they were allowed to go out into the sun 
without hats. The Persians, on the contrary, wore their 
hair long, and protected themselves from the sun by soft 
caps. We learn also from this passage in Herodotus, 
that it was not the fashion in his time to bury the dead 
after a battle. 

All the ancient civilized races took great liberties with 
their hair, as well as with the hair of other people. 
Persons of rank in Egypt, after shaving off their own 
hair, wore wigs to distinguish them from bare-headed 
peasants. A still more inconvenient fashion of Egyptian 
dandies was the wearing of false beards upon the chin, 
composed of plaited hair, and varying in length according 
to the rank of the wearer. We find that, in all the 
ancient civilizations, fashion selected similar objects upon 



238 



SOME LADIES OF THE OLD SCHjOOL. 



which to exercise its authority. Sir Gardner Wilkinson 
mentions that there was a fashion in dogs in ancient 
Egypt, which changed from time to time. Some breeds 
were fashionable on account of their extreme ugliness, 
others for their beauty or size. The favorite dog of a 
popular princess would set the fashion in dogs for a long 
time, as it does in mere modern days. As favorite dogs 
were frequently mummied, and placed in the tombs of 
their owners, we are able to trace several changes of 
fashion in these creatures. 

Professor Flower could have drawn some apt illustra- 
tions from the burdensome head dresses found in ancient 
tombs. Some of these were not merely burdensome, but 
hideous, the hair being extended in such a way as to make 
the head four or five times larger than nature made it. 

It were well if human beings would be satisfied with 
self-torment for fashion's sake. On almost any afternoon 
you may see in Broadway terriers bred so small that a 
full grown dog does not weigh much more than a large rat. 
This custom of changing the natural form and size of 
animals for fashion's sake is both ancient and wide- 
spread. The Hottentots twist the horns of their cattle into 
various fantastic shapes while the horns are young and 
flexible, and in some parts of Africa the horns of sheep 
are made to grow in several points by splitting the horn 
with a knife when it begins to grow. Among ourselves, 
too, horses tail3 are still occasionally docked ,for old 
fashion's sake, and Professor Flower remarks that the 
ancient custom of cropping the ears of horses is not yet 
extinct in England. 

Among savages the modes of fashionable deformity are 
more numerous than with civilized people, though they 
are less injurious. Some tribes color their nails red or 
black. Tattooing the skin in an almost universal practice. 
Some savages blacken their teeth ; others pull the mouth 



SOME LADIES OF THE OLD SCHOOL, 239 

all out of shape with heavy pendents ; others make holes 
in their ears, and continue to stretch them, until a man 
can pass his arms through his ears. It is a strange thing 
that the practice of flattening the head, in use among our 
Flathead Indians, does not appear to injure the brain. 
White men who have resided in that tribe report that any 
mother who should fail to flatten the heads of her children 
into the fashionable shape, would be thought a very 
indolent and unkind parent, since it would subject her 
children to the unsparing ridicule of their playmates. 
Nor could the girls ever hope for marriage, nor the boys 
aspire to have any influence in the tribe. 

The two worst fashions in deformity, according to Pro- 
fessor Flower, are cramping the feet and compressing the 
body. The sufferings undergone by Chinese girls, in 
reducing their feet to the fashionable size, are so severe 
and long continued as to excite our wonder even more 
than our pity. The learned professor gives a pair of 
pictures to show what ladies do with themselves when 
they try to conform to the fashion of half-yard waist. 
One presents to us the statue of the Venus of Milo in all 
the majestic amplitude of nature. The other exhibits 
the Paris waist of May, 1880, a silly, trivial, nipped figure 
of the fashionable number of inches in circuit, an object 
of equal horror to the anatomist and to the artist. 

We moderns, however, have one comfort. We have 

evolved the fashion.of not following the fashion. Thus, 

the late Lord Palmerston never would wear boots which 

did not give t@ each of his toes all its natural rights, and 

so he set the fashion of net wearing the fashionable boot. 

In every American community there are now to be found 

ladies of the new school, who, if they follow the fashion 

at all, follew it at a rational distance, and know how to 

preserve their health and freedom without singularity. 

It is no longer difficult to follow the fashion of following 

the fashion, as Chesterfield advised, " three paces behind." 
15 



TORU DUTT. 

ONE day in August, 1876, the English poet and critic, 
Mr. Edmund W. Gosse, was lingering in the office 
of the London " Examiner " mourning over the dullness 
of the book-trade at that season, and complaining that 
the publishers sent him no books worth reviewing. 
While he was still talking upon this subject to his friend, 
Mr. Minto, the editor of the paper, the postman arrived, 
bringing a meager little packet, marked with an unfamiliar 
Indian postmark. Upon being opened it proved to con- 
tain a small pamphlet, entitled, " A Sheaf Gleaned in 
Frei:ch Fields, by Toru Dutt," which Mr. Minto thrust 
hastily into the reluctant hands of Mr. Gosse, exclaiming 
as he did so : " There, see whether you can't make some- 
thing out of that." 

The critic did not expect to make anything of it. It 
was a thin, shabby, ugly little book, of about two hundred 
pages, bound in orange color, unattractive in type, and 
without preface or introduction, its oddly printed title- 
page merely conveying the information that it was pub- 
lished at Bhowanipore, at the Saptahiksambad Press. 
He took it, however, and the first thing he found in it 
was a translation of A Morning Serenade, by Victor 
Hugo. 

" What was my surprise and almost rapture," he says 
in relating the incident, " to open at such verse as this : 

" Still barred thy doors ! The far east glows, 

The morning wind blows fresh and free. 

Should not the hour that wakes the rose 

Awaken also thee ? 
240 




TORU DUTT AND SISTER, 



T0RU DUTT. 243 

%i All look for thee, Love, Light, and Song; 
Light in the sky deep red above, 
Song, in the lark of pinions strong, 
And in my heart, true Love. 

u Apart, we miss our nature's goal, 
Why strive to cheat our destinies ? 
Was not my love made for thy soul ? 
Thy beauty for mine eyes ? 
No longer sleep, 

Oh, listen now I 
1 wait and weep, 
But where art thou ? " 

" When poetry is as good as this," continues Mr. Gosse, 
it does not much matter whether Rouveyre prints it upon 
Whatman paper, or whether it steals to light in blurred 
type from some press in Bhowanipore." 

The volume which thus pleasantly surprised an accom- 
plished reviewer was the work of a young Hindu girl, 
then only twenty years of age. Toru Dutt was the 
youngest child of Govin Chunder Dutt, a retired Indian 
officer of high caste. She was born in Calcutta on the 
fourth of March, 1856, and, with the exception of a year's 
visit to Bombay, her childhood, and that of her elder sister 
Aru, was passed at her father's garden-house in the city 
of her birth. Her parents, whom she dearly loved, were 
devout Christians, and brought her up to share their faith. 
She was well acquainted, however, with all the ancient 
songs and legends of her own people, and always retained 
for them a tenderness of which she sometimes speaks 
half apologetically, while at other times she grows warm 
in their praise. Often her mother, herself, and Aru,— 
for both sisters possessed very clear, and well-trained 
contralto voices — would sing these strange old ballads in 
the evening, when the sudden descent of the tropic night 
brought welcome dusk and coolness after the glare and 
heat of an Indian day. 



244 TORU DUTT. 

The two sisters were devoted companions. Torn, the 
younger by eighteen months, always unconsciously took 
the lead both in studies and amusements, although, as 
their father records, there was no assumption of superi- 
ority on her part. " It seemed perfectly natural to Aru," 
he says, " to fall into the background in the presence of 
her sister. The love between them was always perfect." 

They remained until 1869 in the happy retirement of 
their home, studying and learning how to perform house- 
hold tasks, none of which they considered too mean for 
them. Much of their time was spent in the garden, of 
which no description could be given so clear or so beauti- 
ful as Toru's own, written a few years later : 

"A sea of foliage girds our garden round, 
But not a sea of dull, unvaried green, 
Sharp contrasts of all colors here are seen; 
The light-green, graceful tamarinds abound 
Amid the mangoe clumps of green profound. 
And palms arise, like pillars gray, between ; 
And o'er the quiet pools the seemuls lean, 
Red, — red, and startling like the trumpet's sound. 
But nothing can be lovelier than the ranges 

Of bamboos to the eastward, when the moon 
Looks through their gaps, and the white lotus changes 
Into a cup of silver. One might swoon 

Drunken with beauty then, or gaze and gaze 
On a primeval Eden, in amaze." 

In November, 1869, the two girls went to Europe, and 
visited France, Italy, and England. In France they were 
sent to school for the only time in their lives, spending a 
few months at a French pension. It must have been 
chiefly during this period that Toru gained her marvel- 
ous intimacy with the French language. English she 
apoke and wrote well — even wonderfully well considering 
her age and nationality — yet an occasional lapse betrays 
the foreigner. Her French, on the contrary, fluent, grace- 



TORU DUTT. 245 

ful, and idiomatic, seems not the toilfully acquired 
accompli, imeni of an educated Hindu, but the natural 
speech of a Parisian lady. A brief sample, taken almost 
ct random, will prove this. It is a description of the 
hero in her romance called Le Journal de Mademoiselle 
d'Arvers. 

" II est beau en effet. Sa taille est haute, mais quel- 
quesuns la trouveraient mince ; sa chevelure noire est 
boucl^e et tombe jusqu'a la nuque ; ses youx noirs sont 
profonds et bien fendus ; le front est noblo ; la Idvre 
supdrieure, couverte par une moustache naissante ct noire, 
est parfaitement modelee ; son menton a quelque chose de 
severe ; son teint est d'un blanc presque f^minin, ce qui 
denote sa haute naissance." 

She always loved France. Her first book, as we see, 
was a volume of translations from the French ; her one 
long prose work was composed in French; the first 
article she ever published was a critical esssay upon a 
French author ; and two of her most stirring English 
poems treat of French subjects — one, an ode written in 
1870 during the dark days of the Franco-Prussian War, 
the second, lines inscribed on the fly-leaf of Erckmann- 
Chatrian's novel Madame Therese. The latter concludes 
thus : 

I read the story, and my heart beats fast ! 
Well might all Europe quail before thee, France, 
Battling against oppression ! Years have passed, 
Yet of that time men speak with moistened glance. 
Va-nu-pieds ! When rose high your Marseillaise 
Man knew his rights to earth's remotest bound 
And tyrants trembled. Yours alone the praise ! 
Ah, had a Washington but then been found ! 

On leaving France the sisters went to England, where 
they attended the lectures for women at Cambridge, and 
in 1873 they returned to their beloved home in Calcutta, 



246 TORU DUTT. 

where the four remaining years of Toru's life were passed. 
A photograph taken before their departure shows both 
girls to have been pleasing and refined" in appearance 
while Toru's rather round face with its bronze skin, 
brilliant eyes, and shading mass of loose hair, might be 
termed pretty, did we not prefer to call it expressive, 
since its alertness and intelligence possess a stronger 
charm than its beauty. 

Toru's career as an author dated from her return to 
India. Equipped already with a stock of knowledge 
which, as Mr. Gosse well says, " would have sufficed to 
make an English or French girl seem learned, but which 
in her case was simply miraculous," she could not rest 
content with these acquirements, but devoted herself 
zealously to the study of Sanskrit, under her father's 
tuition; a pursuit which she continued until, in con- 
sideration of her failing health, he required her to give it 
up. Her first publication, which appeared in the Bengal 
Magazine when she was but eighteen years of age, was 
an essay upon the French poet Leconte de Lisle, with 
whose somewhat austere compositions she had much 
sympathy. This was soon followed by another upon 
Jos^phin Soulary, both being illustrated by translations 
into English verse. 

In July, 1874, her sister Aru died at the age of twenty, 
and in her Toru lost a faithful helper and friend. It had 
been their cherished project to publish an anonymous 
novel which Toru was to writj and Aru, who possessed a 
striking talent for design, was to illustrate. Toru began 
the novel — Le Journal do Mademoiselle d'Arvers — before 
leaving Europe, but Aru died without having seen a page 
of it, and Toru herself was in her grave when the com- 
pleted manuscript was found among her papers by her 
father and given to the public. 

The " Sheaf Gleaned in French Fields " appeared, as 



TORU DUTT. 247 

we have stated, in 1876. This wonderful book of trans- 
lations, made by a young girl in India, from one foreign 
language into another, found but two reviewers in all 
Europe. One of these was the French poet and novelist, 
Andr£ Theuriet, who was himself represented in its pages 
by one of her most successful translations, and who gave 
it just and discriminating praise in the Revue de Deux 
Mbndes. The other was the gentleman who had so 
unwillingly received it in the office of the London 
Examiner. Mr. Gosse, in the memoir with which he 
afterwards prefaced one of Toru's works, claims with 
sympathetic pride that he was " a little earlier still in 
sounding the only note of welcome which reached the 
dying poetess from England." 

The dying poetess ! Toru, never strong, and exhausted 
by the continuous strain of her literary labors, was soon 
to follow the sister whom she so deeply mourned. Her 
letters to her friend, Mile. Clarisse Bader, show us very 
clearly the beginning of the end. Mile. Bader was the 
author of a French work entitled, " Woman in Ancient 
India," which Toru desired to translate into English. 
Before doing so, however, she wrote to ask permission of 
the author. She received a most kind and gracious reply. 

" Dear Mademoiselle," wrote Mile. Bader, " What ! It 
is a descendant of my dear Indian heroines who desires 
to translate the work I have devoted to the ancient Aryan 
women of the Peninsula of the Ganges ! Such a wish, 
emanating from such a source, touches me too deeply for 
me not to listen to it. Translate, then, Woman in Ancient 
India, Mademoiselle ; I authorize you with all my heart 
to do so; and with all my most sympathetic desires I 
invoke the success of your enterprise. . . . When 
you have published in India your translation of Woman 
in Ancient India, I should be very grateful if you would 
kindly send two copies of your version. I should also be 



248 TORY DUTT. 

very happy to receive your photograph if you still possess 
one." 

Toru's reply, dated Calcutta, March 18, 187T, is as 
follows : 

"Dear Mademoiselle, I thank you very sincerely for 
your kind authorization to translate ' Woman in Ancient 
India' and also for your kind and sympathetic letter, 
which has given me the keenest pleasure. 

" I deeply lament not to have been able to begin the 
translation yet, but my constitution is not very strong ; 
more than two years ago I contracted an obstinate cough 
which never leaves me. Nevertheless, I hope soon to set 
to work. 

" I cannot express, Mademoiselle, how much your 
affection for my country and my countrywomen touches 
me, for both your letter and your book sufficiently testify 
that you do love them ; and I am proud to be able to say 
that the heroines of our great epics are worthy of all 
honor and all love. Is there any heroine more touching, 
more loveable, than Sita ? I do not believe there is. 
When, in the evening, I hear my mother sing the old 
songs of our country I alinost always shed tears. Sita's 
lament when, banished for the second time, she wanders 
alone in the vast forest with terror and despair in her 
soul, is so pathetic that I think there is no one who could 
hear it without crying. I enclose for you two little trans- 
lations from that beautiful old language, the Sanskrit. 
Unfortunately, I was obliged to cease my translations 
from the Sanskrit six months ago. My health does not 
permit me to continue them. I send you also my portrait 
and that of my sister. In the photograph she is repre- 
sented as seated. She was so sweet and so good ! The 
photograph dates from four years ago, when I was 
seventeen and she scarcely nineteen. I too, Mademoiselle, 
shall be grateful, if you will kindly send me your photo- 
graph. I will keep it as one of my greatest treasures. 



TORU DUTT. 249 

" I must pause here ; I will not further intrude upon 
your time. Like M. LefSvre-Deumier, I must say : 

"Farewell then, dear friend whom I have not known, 1 '' 

" For, Mademoiselle, I count you among my friends and 
among my best friends, although I have not seen you. 

" Believe, Mademoiselle, the renewed assurance of my 
friendship, Toru Dtttt." 

From a postscript we learn that she had expected to 
visit Europe for her health, and she expresses her hope 
of soon meeting her unknown friend. In April, however, 
she writes again, saying that she had been very ill for a 
fortnight, and that this plan had been abandoned. She 
asked Mile. Bader to write to her at her old address — 
"your letter and your portrait will do me good." It is 
pleasant to think how she must have enjoyed the cheering 
and appreciative letter which she received in reply. It 
enclosed the portrait, too, although Mile. Bader declares 
that her photographs were always each uglier than the 
last, and that it was a great piece of self-sacrifice for her 
to send one to anybody who had never seen her. 

Toru answers briefly but warmly, thanking her friend 
for her kindness and excusing herself from writing more 
at length on the ground that she has been suffering four 
months from fever, and is still too weak to go from her 
own room to the next without feeling extreme fatigue. 
One more letter from Mile. Bader, even more cordial and 
affectionate than the last a closes the correspondence. It 
is full of sympathy and encouragement. She exclaims 
with surprise that Toru, in her photograph apparently 
the picture of health, should have been so ill. 

"But now," she adds, "you have wholly recovered, 
have you not? And, at the time of the Exposition, you 
will come to our sweet land of France, whose mild breezes 
will do you good — you, who have suffered from your 



250 TORU DUTT. 

burning climate. Friendly hearts await you with joyous 
hope. My parents and myself love you much — without 
having ever seen you, but your letters and your works 
have revealed to us the goodness of your heart, the candor 
of your soul. Come, then, my amiable friend, to seal 
with your presence an affection which is already yours." 

The two friends never met; the letter was never 
answered, never received. It was dated September 11, 
1877. Toru Dutt died August 30th of the same year, 
aged twenty-one years, six months, and twenty-six days. 
She had breathed her last before the letter was even 
written. Her last words were, " It is only the physical 
pain that makes me cry." 

She died almost unknown to fame. A few men in France 
and England who had made the Orient a special study, 
had noted her works and praised them as the achievement 
of a Hindu genius ; a still smaller number had read them 
and loved them for their poetry alone. But, from the day 
of her death her reputation grew, and a second edition of 
the " Sheaf Gleaned in French Fields" was soon prepared, 
with a brief preface by her father. This book was, it 
must be remembered, the only one of hers published in 
her lifetime ; upon this alone it was at first thought that 
her fame must rest. Even had this been the case, her 
place in literature should have been secure. The trans- 
lations vary ; some are almost flawless gems of English, 
such as the "Serenade" already given, or this version of 
a poem by Evariste de Parny, on the " Death of a Young 
Girl": 

" Though childhood's days were past and gone 
More innocent no child could be ; 
Though grace in every feature shone, 
Her maiden heart was fancy free, 

"A few more months, or haply days 

And Love would blossom — so we thought 
As lifts in April's genial rays 

The rose its clusters richly wrought. 



TORU DUTT. 251 

** But God had destined otherwise, 
And so she gently fell asleep, 
A creature of the starry skies 
Too lovely for the earth to keep. 

" She died in earliest womaflhood; 

Thus dies, and leaves behind no trace, 
A bird's song in a leafy wood — 

Thus melts a sweet smile from a face." 

At other times she is not so fortunate. Sometimes a 
I oem intended to be picturesque or impressive is given a 
really comical turn by the introduction of some unex- 
pected little colloquial phrase, used by Toru with perfect 
good faith as to its suitability. Take, for example, her 
translation of Victor Hugo's magnificent piece upon the 
" Ports of Paris " in^which the mood of the English reader 
is undesirably affected by the statement that 

" At a respectful distance keep the forts, 
A multitude, a populace, of monstrous guns, 
That in the far»horizon wolf-like prowl." 

The word "cannon-wagon," too, does not lend itself 
gracefully to blank verse. 

" The sinister cannon-wagons darkly grouped, " 

were doubtless awe-inspiring objects, but the effect upon 
the reader is not wholly the one intended. Yet in the 
same piece occur these finely resonant lines descriptive 

of cannon: 

"Far stretching out 
Their neckvi * bronze around the wall immense, 
They rest awake while peacefully we sleep, 
And in their hoarse lungs latent thunders growl 
Low premonitions. " 

The notes appended to the book are almost as interest- 
ing, in their curious display of unlooked-for knowledge and 
equally unlooked-for ignorance, as the work itself. It is 
plain that she is acquainted with our American authors* 



252 TORU DUTT 

In a note upon Charles Nodier she remarks that his 
prose stories are charming and remind her of Washington 
Irving. In another upon Baudelaire, she detects in one 
of his poems a plagiarism from Longfellow — a literal 
translation of a verse from the "Psalm of Life." 

Fortunately for the reading public, however, we have 
other standards by which to judge of Toru's talent. After 
her death her father found among her papers the com- 
plete French romance of " Mademoiselle d'Arvers," which 
was soon published under the editorial care of Mile. 
Bader, and a sufficient number of English poems to form 
the little volume lately issued under the title of " Ancient 
Songs and Ballads of Hindustan," and prefaced by Mr. 
Gosse with a memoir of the author. 

" Le Journal de Mademoiselle d'Arvers " is a novel of 
modern French society, treating of the love of two broth- 
ers for the same beautiful and noble girl. It is tragic, the 
unhappy passion leading finally to fratricide and madness. 
Yet, in dealing with these difficult matters, Toru never 
becomes melodramatic or ridiculous, and often displays 
true power, though she is not seldom unreal and fantas- 
tic. Of more interest to American readers is the collec- 
tion of her English poems — her chief claim to distinction. 
These, too, vary greatly. She had not yet completely 
conquered the language in which she wrote ; we are still 
surprised by occasional prosaic expressions in the midst 
of poetry, and the strange legends which she relates are 
often rendered stranger to our ears by the phrases in 
which she relates them. But they are interesting, strik- 
ing, and often beautiful. Under the heading "Miscel- 
laneous Poems " there occur at the end of the volume a 
few pages which having once read we should find it very 
hard to spare. Through them all breathes the bright and 
kindly spirit that made their young author so dear to all 
around her . 



TORU DUTT. 253 

Geniuses are not always comfortable people to live with ; 
but Toru, although during the four years in which she 
accomplished the work of her lifetime she was a frail 
invalid wasting to her death, seems never to have been to 
those who shared her daily life anything but a blessing, 
from which they found it the greatest of sorrows to part. 

To some readers, the most touching thing in all her 
sad, short history is the brief paragraph in which her 
father, now childless, describes his companionship with 
her in labor. She had a wonderful memory, and when a 
dispute arose between them as to the significance of any 
word or phrase, she was very apt to be in the right. Some- 
times, however, her father was so sure of his position that 
he would propose laying a wager — usually a rupee — before 
referring to the lexicon to settle the question. Toru 
almost always won, but now and then she was mistaken. 

" It was curious and very pleasant for me," says her 
father, " to watch her when she lost. First a bright smile ; 
then thin fingers patting my grizzled cheek ; then perhaps 
some quotation from Mrs. Barrett Browning, her favorite 
poetess, like this : 

'Ah, my gossip, you are older and more learned, and a man I * 

or some similar pleasantry." 

The story of her life can not be better closed than by 
quoting here the beautiful last poem of her last book, in 
which her loving and observant spirit finds, perhaps, its 
highest expression. In it she sings once more of that 
dear garden home where she and Aru spent their child- 
hood together, and to which both returned to die. It is 
called " Our Casuarina Tree." 

Like a huge Python, winding round and round 
The rugged trunk, indented deep with scars, 
Up to its very summit near the stars, 

A creeper climbs, in whose embraces bound 



254 T0RU DUTT. 

No other tree could live, but gallantly 
The giant wears the scarf, and flowers are hung 
In crimson clusters all the boughs among, 

Whereon all day are gathered bird and bee ; 
And oft at night the garden overflows 
With one sweet song that seems to have no close 
Sung darkling from our tree while men repose. 

When first my casement is wide open thrown 

At dawn, my eyes delighted on it rest ; 

Sometimes, and most in winter, on its crest 
A grey baboon sits statue-like alone 

Watching the sunrise ; while on lower boughs 
His puny offspring leap about and play ; 
And far and near ko-kilas hail the day ; 

And to their pastures wend our sleepy cows; 
And in the shadow, on the broad tank cast 
By that hoar tree, so beautiful and vast, 
The water-lilies spring, like snow enmassed. 

But not because of its magnificence 
Dear is the Casuarina to my soul : 
Beneath it we have played ; though years may roll 

sweet companions, loved with love intense, 
For your sakes, shall the tree be ever dear? 

Blent with your images, it shall arise 
In memory, till the hot tears blind mine eyes ! 
What is that dirge-like murmur that I hear 
Like the sea breaking on a shingle-beach? 
It is the tree's lament, an eerie speech 
That haply to the unknown land may reach. 

Unknown, yet well-known to the eye of faith! 

Ah, I have heard that wail far, far, away 

In distant lands, by many a sheltered bay, 
When slumbered in his cave the water-wraith 

And the waves gently kissed the classic shore . 
Of France or Italy, beneath the moon, 
When earth lay tranced in a dreamless swoon: 

And every time the music rose — before 
Mine inner vision rose a form sublime, 
Thy form, O Tree, as in my happy prime 

1 saw thee, in my own loved native clime. 



TORU DUTT. 255 

Therefore I fain would consecrate a lay 

Unto thy honor, Tree, beloved of those 

Who now in blessed sleep for aye repose, 
Dearer than life to me, alas ! were they ! 

Mayst thou be numbered when my days are done 
With deathless trees, like thtfse in Borrowdale, 
Under whose awful branches lingered pale 

44 Fear, trembling Hope, and Death the skeleton, 
And Time the shadow;" and though weak the verae 
That would thy beauty fain, oh fain rehearse, 
May Love defend thee from Oblivion's curse. 



GEORGE SAND. 

GEORGE SAND is a name which the English-speak- 
ing world still pronounces with something less than 
respect. She was not of our race, nor of our manners, 
and her immediate ancestors were extreme types of every- 
thing in human character most remote from ourselves 
and our sense of the right and becoming. 

To begin with, she was the great-granddaughter of that 
brilliant, dissolute Maurice de Saxe, Marshal of Prance, 
who in 1745 won for Louis XV and in his presence the 
battle of Fontenoy. Her great-grandmother, a scarcely 
less remarkable personage, was Aurora, the beautiful 
Countess von Koenigsmark. Her grandmother, the child 
of this famous, disorderly pair, a lady deeply imbued 
with aristocratic feeling, was proud of her illustrious, 
irregular descent, and preserved in her demeanor the 
formality of a past period. In her youth she experienced 
strange vicissitudes. Withdrawn at an early age from a 
convent in order to marry Count de Horn, of whom she 
knew nothing, she was left a widow while fetes were in 
progress in honor of the newly married couple. She lived 
for some time upon a modest pension allowed her by the 
Dauphiness ; then, that Princess dying, she was left des- 
titute. It was a fashion then in Europe for persons who 
had no other resource to apply for aid to Voltaire, and 
to him the young Countess appealed. Madame Sand 
always preserved among her treasures her grandmother's 
letter to the chief of the " philosophers," and his reply. 
256 




GEORGE SAND. 






GEORGE SAND. 259 

"It is to the singer of Fontenoy that the daughter of 
Marshal de Saxe addresses herself in order to obtain 
bread/' wrote the Countess. "... I have thought that 
he who has immortalized the victories of the father would 
be interested in the misfortunes of the daughter. To him 
it belongs to adopt the children of heroes, and to be my 
support, as he is that of the daughter of the great Cor- 

1161116." 

"Madame," the aged poet replied, "I shall go very 
soon to rejoin the hero your father, and I shall inform 
him with indignation of the condition in which his 
daughter now is." He then advised her to appeal to 
his particular friend, the Duchess de Choiseul, wife of the 
prime minister, "whose soul is just, noble, and benefi- 
cent." 

"Doubtless," he concluded, "you did me too much 
honor when you thought a sick old man, persecuted and 
withdrawn from the world, could be so happy as to serve 
the daughter of Marshal de Saxe. But you have done 
me justice in not doubting the lively interest I take in the 
daughter of so great a man." 

This letter, which she hastened to show to the Duchess 

de Choiseul, procured her the relief of which she stood in 

need, and shortly afterward she married again. Her 

second husband, M. Dupin, died after ten years of wedded 

life, leaving in his widow the care of their only child, 

Maurice. Madame Dupin, with what the Revolution had 

left to her of her husband's property, then purchased the 

country estate of Nohant, in Berri, since made famous 

through the genius of George Sand, and went there to 

live with her son. He, when twenty-six years of age, 

contracted a secret marriage with Sophie Victorie Dela- 

borde, a Swiss milliner, the daughter of a dealer in song 

birds. 

Mademoise'le Delaborde, four years older than Maurice 
16 J 



26c GEORGE SAND. 

Dupin, without property, and a somewhat disreputable 
person, was not cordially welcomed into the family by 
Madame Dupin. It was natural that she should look 
upon the marriage as a calamity. Nevertheless, she had 
the good sense to conceal her feelings, and to forgive an 
error which was plainly irrevocable, and, although she 
always heartily disliked her daughter-in-law, she was 
obliged soon to acknowledge that she was a most efficient 
and devoted wife, who kept her husband very happy. 

July 5, 1804, the last year of the Republic and the first 
of the Empire, a daughter was born to this oddly-assorted 
couple, who bestowed upon her the name of Amantinc- 
Lucile-Aurore. The infancy of this child was passed in 
Paris with her mother, her father residing with them 
whenever his military duties did not require his presence 
elsewhere. Captain Dupin, however, as aide-de-camp to 
Prince Murat, was so much away from home that in 1808 
his wife, unable to bear a longer separation, went to join 
him in Madrid. Little Aurore, four years of age, accom- 
panied her, and was presented to Murat attired for the occa- 
sion in a miniature copy of her father's uniform, includ- 
ing spurs, high boots, and tiny sword. The Prince was 
pleased with the jest, and took a fancy to his little aide- 
de-camp, as he called her. 

Captain Dupin, shortly after his return to France, was 
killed by a fall from his horse. This sad event doomed 
his little daughter to live for many years in an atmos- 
phere of discord, the object of continual contention 
between her plebeian mother and her patrician grand- 
mother, each of whom claimed her duty and affection. 
Obedience she rendered to both when their commands, 
too frequently contradictory, permitted; but her hear* 
was her mother's. Within the walls of the chateau she 
passed unhappy hours, for the domestic warfare was to 
her a constat t source of misery; but, once out of doors 



GEORGE SAND. 



26l 



playing with her village companions, exploring every nook 
and corner of the fields and woods, and listening half 
creduously to the legends and fairy tales of the neighbor- 
hood, her vivid imagination and her admirable health 
made her one of the gayest and happiest of children. 
After a time, too, a separation was gradually effected 
between her mother and herself, and this, although griev- 
ous in itself, rendered her life more peaceful. Madame 
Maurice Dupin, who was poor, in consideration of the 
benefits such an arrangement would confer upon the child, 
consented to leave her in the care of her grandmother, 
and herself removed permanently to Paris. Aurore 
slowly learned to love the old lady whose formal manners 
long repelled and chilled her. For years it was her 
dearest hope to effect a reconciliation, and she resented 
with more than childish indignation the scornful remarks 
of the servants, who used to taunt her with wishing to 
go to her mother and eat beans in a garret, rather than 
stay at the chateau and learn to be a lady. 

Her education was varied and peculiar. While on the 
one hand her grandmother and her grandmother's friends 
tried their best to teach her the elaborate accomplish- 
ments and submissive demeanor which they considered 
desirable in a young girl, on the other she was dabbling 
in Latin, history, literature, and classic mythology, play- 
ing practical jokes upon her tutor, and inventing iaew 
games and dances for herself and the village children. 
Of religious instruction she had none. In the course of 
time she invented for herself a Being half hero, half 
deity, whom she named Coramb£, a Greek god possessed 
of the Christian virtues, to whom she erected shrines in 
the woods, before which, as an acceptable sacrifice, she 
would lay flowers and set free the birds and butterflies 
that she had taken captive. 

When she was thirteen, all this came to an end. She 



262 GEORGE SAND. 

was sent to the English convent of Augustine nuns in 
Paris. The pupils in this convent were divided into two 
bands — the dialles or mischievous girls, and the sages or 
good girls. Aurore was promptly enrolled among the 
diables, and so distinguished herself by pranks of many 
kinds, and especially by her earnestness in an enterprise 
called mysteriously " the Deliverance of the Victim " (the 
search, partly serious and partly frolicsome, for an erring 
nun supposed to be imprisoned somewhere within the 
building), that she soon earned the appellation of Madcap 
from her admiring friends. But, in the second year of 
her stay, this heroic undertaking suddenly lost its charm. 
She was converted, became a devoted Catholic, and 
desired fervently to become a nun. By her companions 
she was now renamed, Saint Aurore. 

The sisters were too wise to encourage her excessive 
devotion, and her confessor, disapproving sudden asceti- 
cism, ordered her as a penance to continue the games and 
amusements from which she wished to withdraw. Her 
taste for them quickly returned, and she became again a 
leader among her companions, although scrupulously 
avoiding anything like mischief or insubordination. Her 
desire for the cloister was not finally dispelled until a year 
or two later, when a fever of reading came upon her, and 
she devoured in turn the pages of Aristotle, Bacon, Locke, 
Condillac, Bossuet, Pascal Montaigne, Montesquieu, 
Leibnitz, and others. 

" Reading Leibnitz," she afterward remarked, " I 
became a Protestant without knowing it." 

A little later she found in Jean Jacques Rousseau a 
writer whose poetic treatment of religious subjects 
impressed her still more strongly. She passed through 
many phases of religious feeling in her life, but she was 
enabled to say in later years : 

" As to my religion, the ground of it has never varied. 



GEORGE SAND. 



263 



The forms of the past have vanished for me as for my 
century before the light of study and reflection. But the 
eternal doctrine of believers, of God and His goodness, 
the immortal soul and the hopes of another life, this is 
what, in myself, has been proof against all examination, 
all discussion, and even intervals of despairing doubt." 

Aurore Dupin left the convent and returned to Nohant, 
in 1820, when she was fifteen years of age. At the 
chateau she now passed the midnight hours in study, and 
in considering the most difficult problems of existence ; 
but her days w r ere spent in a very different manner. 
Within doors she exerted herself to keep on peaceable 
terms with her grandmother, whose temper had not 
improved with age, in practicing the harp, in drawing, in 
studying philosophy and anatomy, and in getting up little 
comedies to amuse her elders ; out-of-doors, attired for 
greater convenience in a suit of boy's clothes, with blouse 
and gaiters, she pursued botany or hunted quails with her 
eccentric tutor, M. Deschatres. She was a fearless rider, 
as well as a good shot ; both these last accomplishments 
being due to the instruction of her half-brother Hippolyte, 
who had taught her during a brief visit home, while on 
leave of absence from his regiment. Her daring feats 
astonished and shocked the neighbors ; but M. Deschatres, 
who cared for nothing but quails and anatomy, did not 
trouble himself to restrain her, and old Madame Dupin 
was fast falling into her dotage. The young girl was free 
from restraint. 

A year later the old lady died, leaving all her property 
to Aurore. She now returned to her mother in Paris, 
hoping for a happiness which she did not find! Time and 
absence had loosened the bond between them, and Madame 
Maurice Dupin was not blessed with an equable disposition. 
Aurore obeyed her in everything without question, but 
this excess of submission only exasperated the mother, 



264 



GEORGE SAND. 



and it was a relief to both when the girl went to visit 
some friends at their country house near Melun. Here 
she met M. Casimir Dudevant, a young man of twenty- 
seven, who was pleased w r ith her from the first. In a 
short time he offered her his hand, and she accepted him. 

She was then a beautiful girl of eighteen. Her hair, 
dark and curly, fell in profusion upon her shoulders ; her 
features were good, her complexion of a pale, clear olive 
tint, her eyes dark, soft, and full of expression. If her 
figure was somewhat too short, she possessed small and 
beautifully shaped hands and feet. Her manners were 
simple, her voice gentle and low. With strangers and 
acquaintances she was reserved, and did not shine in con- 
versation ; but among friends she was animated, frank, 
and charming. It is little wonder that M. Dudevant was 
attracted by her, but it is somewhat surprising that he 
was not in love with her. The marriage was admitted by 
both to be one founded upon friendship only. Doubtless 
it was by Aurore regarded as an escape from her difficult 
relations with her mother. It proved a sad mistake. 

The young couple, fatally ignorant of each other's 
character, proved to have few tastes in common ; their 
dispositions were wholly uncongenial; and, to make 
matters worse, M. Dudevant after a time fell into habits 
of dissipation. For the sake of her two children, Maurice 
and Solange, Madame Dudevant made no attempt to 
release herself, until at the end of eight years, she 
found that the situation had become intolerable. She 
was totally indifferent to her husband, and he regarded 
her with feelings of positive dislike. 

She then made a curious proposition to him. For some 
time she had been conscious of her literary talent, and 
she now proposed to her husband that he should permit 
her to spend every alternate three months in Paris, there 
to trv her fortune with her pen. Her youngest child, the 



GEORGE SAND. 265 

little Solange, was to join her as soon as she was com- 
fortably established ; her son, whom she did not wish to 
remove from his excellent tutor, if indeed his father 
would have let him go, was to remain at Nohant, where 
she would herself reside during six months of the year. 

She was to be allowed six hundred dollars per annum 
from her own fortune, on condition that she never 
exceeded that sum, and the rest of her property was to 
remain in the hands of M. Dudevant. To this singular 
compromise he at once assented, and she set out for the 
capital in 1831. 

She carried introductions to one or two literary people, 
but they gave her small encouragement. A novelist to 
whom she first applied told her that women ought not to 
write at all. Another tried to cheer her with the informa- 
tion that if she persevered she might some day make as 
much as three hundred dollars a year by writing, although 
he condemned as valueless such specimens as she showed 
him of her fiction. He took her, however, upon the staff 
of Figaro, of which paper he was the editor, and paid her 
for her labor at the rate of seven francs ($1.35) a column. 
Her talents were not suited to journalism ; but she worked 
hard and faithfully for Figaro. In those days she was 
excluded by her sex from places to which, in her profes- 
sion, it was desirable she should have access. She there- 
fore assumed once more the masculine disguise to which 
she had become accustomed in her girlhood, and was 
enabled to pass anywhere as a student of sixteen. After 
she had become famous, much odium was cast upon her 
on account of this habit of hers by the scandal-mongers. 

She soon made friends among the literary Bohemians 
of Paris, and many of her earlier and briefer works were 
written in collaboration with one of them, M. Jules 
Sandeau, afterwards the author of several successful 
novels and plays. These joint performances included a 



266 GEORGE SAND. 

novelette entitled La Prima Donna, and a complete novel, 
called Hose et Blanche, which was published under M. 
Sandeau's nom de-plume of Jules Sand. It was a book of 
no importance, and is now omitted from the works of both 
its authors, but it attracted the notice of a publisher, who 
requested another volume from the same pen. A new 
novel written entirely by Madame Dudevant was then 
lying in her desk, and she at once gave this into his hands. 
M. Sandeau, unwilling to claim any credit for a work ia 
which he had no share, refused to permit her to use their 
usual pseudonym. To oblige the publisher, who wished to 
connect the work with its predecessor, it was decided that 
only the prefix should be changed, and George, j, favorite 
namo among husbandmen, was selected as representative 
of her native province of Berri. In April, 1832, the book 
appeared. It was entitled, " Indiana, by George Sand." 

Its success with the public was so immediate and so 
great that the author was alarmed. 

" The success of Indiana has thrown me into dismay," 
?he wrote to an old friend. u Till now, I thought my 
writing was without consequence and would not merit the 
slightest attention. Fate has decreed otherwise. The 
unmerited admiration of which I have become the object 
must be justified." 

Many, even of those who praised her most, predicted 
that she would never equal this first venture ; but Valen- 
tine, which appeared a few months later, convinced them 
of their error. Both these books are stories of unhappy 
marriage. Indiana is a romantic, high-spirited girl, 
bound for life to a dull, imperious, but not bad-hearted 
man much older than herself. The other chief characters 
are a graceful, heartless scoundrel who makes love to 
her, and a cousin, a sort of guardian angel, who, after 
long loving her in silence, at last succeeds in rescuing 
her from her miserable situation. Valentine, like Indiana, 



GEORGE SAND. 26/ 

is the victim of a mariage de convenance. The highly- 
wrought scenes of passion, and the exaggerated language 
of many passages which now repel the reader, were then 
admired. In the simple portions we can already recog- 
nize that simple, forcible, and picturesque style which so 
delights us in her tales of humble life — l:i La Petite- 
Fadette, and La Mare au Diable. 

The next work of Madame Sand — for her friends as 
well as the public now learned to call her by that name 
— was that Lelia, of which almost every one has heard, 
although it has now, at least in England and America, few 
readers. LSlia is a novel of impossible characters and 
incidents, written in a declamatory manner. Its only 
interest is as a psychological study of the author, for into 
this work she was wont to say she had put more of her- 
self than into any other. She nevertheless pronounced it 
in later years absurd as a work of art. LSlia surprised 
her friends at the time — although it pleased most of them 
— and was highly successful with the public. One of her 
friends, a naturalist, wrote to her : 

" LSlia is a fancy type. It is not like you — you who 
are merry, who dance the bourrSe, who appreciate lepidop- 
tera, who do not despise puns, who are not a bad needle- 
woman, and make very good preserves. Is it possible 
that you should have thought so much, felt so much; with- 
out any one having any idea of it ? " 

It was a book written in a period of mental depression, 
at a time when her faith appeared to be forsaking her. 
Although it is by no means typical of her ordinary fiction, 
it was destined to produce an impression of her as a 
writer opposed to marriage and morality, and to create a 
prejudice which in England and our country has but 
recently begun to give way. Some critics had already 
accused her of propounding revolutionary doctrines in 
Indiana and Valentine. It is true she declared herself 



268 GEORGE SAND. 

against commercial marriages, and taught that every 
union should be based upon love ; but this, at least in our 
fortunate land and century, does not strike us as either 
shocking or novel. 

From this time the life of George Sand was that of an 
indefatigable literary worker, and no year passed 
unmarked by the issue of new works under her name. 
Yet, notwithstanding these labors, her iron constitution 
permitted her to take long journeys, to enjoy society, and 
often to abandon herself to the delights of her country 
home. She wrote chiefly at night : in the day time she 
walked, climbed, and rode horseback as freely and fre- 
quently as in her girlhood, and her letters to her friends 
dwell continually upon these simple, exhilarating pleas- 
ures. She had, during her whole life, three unfailing 
sources of delight — her children, nature, and music. 

The strange compromise which she had made with her 
husband was evidently one which could not continue. In 
1835 she applied for a divorce, which, after some diffi- 
culties with regard to the children, was granted, her. 
While it was still doubtful whether their guardianship 
should be entrusted to her or to their father, she seriously 
considered the idea, in case of a decision adverse to her 
claim, of leaving France and escaping with them to 
America. The judgment of the court finally placed her in 
possession both of them and of the estate of Nohant. 
To Maurice and Solange she was ever a devoted mother. 
She attended personally to their education and shared 
their amusements. Their affection and their happiness 
fully rewarded her ; and, as both on attaining maturity 
made fortunate marriages, she was enabled to show herself 
as an excellent grandmother also. 

Of Nohant and the neighboring region she never tired. 
" Never a cockchafer passes but I run after it," she says, 
describing her country walks ; and she confesses how, on 



GEORGE SAND. 269 

one occasion, the sight of the cooling stream of the Indre 
proved an irresistible temptation to her, and she walked 
into the water fully dressed — proceeding afterwards 
untroubled upon her twelve-mile walk, while her clothes 
dried upon her in the sun. Nor did her interest in the 
villagers ever flag, and the little peasant children who 
had been her playmates in youth found her a friend in 
their old age. 

Her life from middle age onward was often saddened 
by the troubles of her country. In her political feelings 
she was republican, and she was accused of being a 
socialist. Many of her dear friends were ardent politi- 
cians, and when, after the flight of Louis Philippe in 1848, 
a provisional government was formed with Lamartine at 
its head, she was irresistibly drawn to take a part in the 
struggle. 

" My heart is full and my head on fire," she wrote to a 
fellow-laborer. " All my physical ailments, all my per- 
sonal sorrows are forgotten, i live, I am strong, active; 
1 am not more than twenty years old." 

She worked hard to strengthen and uphold the new 
government. She wrote many fiery articles, and more 
than one ministerial manifesto was attributed, with good 
reason, to her pen. She never relaxed in her efforts 
until leader after leader proved unfitted for his position, 
and to persist was manifestly useless. Returning from 
Paris, where she had been staying that she might be 
upon the field of action, to rest quietly in her country 
home, she found herself regarded with horror by the peas* 
ants, who called her a communist. 

" A pack of idiots," she wrote indignantly to a friend, 
" who threaten to come and set fire to Nohant ! . . 
When they come this way and I walk through the midst 
of them they take off their hats ; but when they have 
gone by, they summon courage to shout, ' Down with the 
communists ! ' " 



2^0 GEORGE SAND. 

After the overthrow of the Provisional Government, 
she had no desire to enter politics again. Her theory cf 
government remained unshaken, but she had little hope 
of seeing it successfully realized in France during her life- 
time. She mingled no more in public affairs except so 
far as after the coup (Petat to ask of Louis Napoleon, 
with whom she had at one time corresponded, a pardon 
for some of her old friends who had been condemned 
to transportation. Her petition was granted at once. 

Born in the last year of the First Empire, George Sand 
lived through the Franco-Prussian War, and saw the 
return of peace and prosperity. She was always sure 
that the good time would come, although during the dark 
days of that long struggle she was in deep sorrow for her 
unhappy country, and painfully anxious for the safety of 
her own home. At one time the Prussians approached 
near, and she wrote to a friend that she worked " expect- 
ing her scrawls to light the pipes of the Prussians." 
But, in another letter, written to M. Flaubert, she says 
cheerily : 

" Mustn't be ill, mustn't be cross, my old troubadour ! 
Say that France is mad, humanity stupid, and that we 
are unfinished animals every one of us ; you must love on 
all the same, yourself, your race, above all, your friends. 
I have my sad hours. I look at my blossoms, those two 
little girls, smiling as ever, their charming mother, and 
my good, hard-working son, whom the end of the world 
will find hunting, cataloguing, doing his daily task, and 
yet as merry as Punch in his rare leisure moments." 

Again, less lightly, but quite as hopefully, she wrote : 

" I do not say that humanity is on the road to the 
heights ; I believe it in spite of all, but I do not asgue 
about it, which is useless, for every one judges according 
to his own eyesight, and the general outlook at the 
present moment is ugly and poor. Besides, I do not need 



GEORGE SAND. 2J\ 

to be assured of the salvation of our planet and its inhabi- 
tants, in order to believe in the necessity of the good and 
the beautiful ; if our planet departs from this law it will 
perish ; if its inhabitants discard it they will be destroyed. 
As for me I wish to hold firm till my last breath, not 
with the certainty or the claim to find a i good place' 
elsewhere, but because my sole pleasure is to maintain 
myself and mine in the upward way." 

George Sand died at Nohant in 1876, nearly seventy- 
two years of age, having neglected an illness which she 
deemed unimportant until it was too late. 

" It is death," she said to those about her ; " I did not 
ask for it, but neither do I regret it." 

For a week she lingered in great suffering, but con- 
scious and courageous to the last. Her thoughts turned 
to the quiet village cemetery where she was soon to rest, 
and almost her last words referred to the trees growing 
there. She desired that none of them should be disturbed, 
or so her children interpreted the words : 

" Ne touchez pas a la verdure." 

At her funeral, which took place in a pouring rain, the 
country people, who had long ago ceased to call her 
communist, flocked in from miles around. There, too, 
were men of letters, scientists, and artists, for she had 
made friends and kept them in all ranks of life. Her 
bier was borne by six peasants, preceded by three chor- 
ister boys and the ancient clerk of the parish, and she 
was buried close by the graves of her father, her grand- 
mother, and two little grandchildren whom she had lost. 
A plain granite monument now marks her resting place. 

The works of George Sand, including novels, stories, 
and plays, are so numerous that only a very few of them 
can find mention here. Among the most famous are the 



2/2 GEORGE SAND. 

" Letters of a Traveler/' the unfortunate " She and He " 
(Elle et Lui), "Lucrezia Floriani," "Consuelo," and the 
three delightful tales of peasant life, entitled respectively, 
"La Petite Fadette" — upon which the familiar play of 
Fanehon the Cricket, is founded — "The Devil's Pond" 
(La Mare du Diable), and " Fran§ois le Champi," from 
which she afterwards made a play. 

The " Letters of a Traveler" are a very striking series 
Written after a journey through Switzerland and Italy, in 
company with the poet Alfred de Musset, her further rela- 
tions with whom are depicted in the story " She and He," 
published after his death. This work was regarded by 
the public as ungenerous, if not unjustifiable; but it must 
be remembered that after the breach between them, De 
Musset had not spared her in his verse. Her book was 
intended as a defence of herself ; but it had the force of a 
judgment upon him. It was soon replied to by the poet's 
brother in another tale, entitled " He and She," in which 
Madame Sand was represented in a light even more 
unfavorable than that in which she had placed the hero 
of her story. It is probable that each version of the 
affair contained truth. Doubtless de Musset and Madame 
Sand were both in fault, for two such pronounced per- 
sonalities could not long have accommodated themselves 
to each other. Their difficulties, however, should never 
have been submitted to the public. 

In "Lucrezia Floriani" she was believed to have com- 
mitted a similar error, since the unpleasing character of 
Karol" was by many supposed to represent her old friend 
and companion, Chopin the composer. She denied that 
such was the case, and it is evident that she did not 
intend a portrait, although there were points of resem- 
blance. Through the interference of unwise acquaint- 
ances, however, the book caused a breach between Chopin 
and herself. In many of her other works too curious 



GEORGE SAND. 273 

critics have claimed to discover pictures of eminent per- 
sons with whom she was acquainted : some have even 
believed that in the ideal heroine " Consuelo " they could 
perceive a representation of the famous Madame Viar- 
dot. 

" Consuelo," although one of the most diffuse, is by 
many considered the best among George Sand's novels. 
There is power in it ; but its incidents seem to us extrava- 
gant and its personages unreal. At present we care less 
for ideal characters and improbable adventures, and more 
for delineations of men and women, with their weak- 
nesses and their strength, such as may be found among 
ourselves. Those of George Sand's works which will 
longest be read are narratives like "Andrd," "La Mar- 
quise," and the pleasant tales to which we have referred. 
In them her heroes and heroines are studied from the 
life, and the scenery amid which they are placed is such 
as she had herself visited in her travels, or — and this far 
oftener — that which lay close around her own home, in 
her fair and fertile native province. 






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